Reading: a discursive practice

Abstract

The present text approaches the issue of reading from the perspective of discourse analysis, following Pêcheux, who believes that it is in the moves of cutting, extracting, dislocating, and confronting that the most particular reading mechanism occurs. Such a reading practice is called by Pêcheux “milling-reading”. From that perspective I analyse a mediatic text, in an attempt to demonstrate that reading is a meaning-production process. Such a conception requires a view of the reader, the author, and the meanings as historically determined. It also implies a view of reading as a gesture of interpretation, constituted in the critical moment of a relation between author/text/reader. The reader does not recognize meanings, does not fill in gaps, rather, through the interpellation of his subject-position, he carries out his own discursive work, (de)constructing the text and ascribing meanings that are not necessarily those expected by the author.