A text's meaning is made by its readers, so the author's intention has no privileged authority over what it means.
Barthes's 1967 essay. The practical consequence is that authorial statements about intent are evidence about the author, not authority about the text — which is why "that's not what I meant" rarely settles an interpretive dispute.
In practice
- A novelist's essay explaining what the book meant is one reading among many, and often a worse one than the critics'.
- A specification's author insisting "that's not what I intended" loses to what the document actually says, which is why the document is written.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Communication & Media
- Essay
- Theories of what stands between an event and its audience