Prefazione / Preface

How much of the mind remains in the text? The latter is the persistent result of a series of choices, made by the former from a system of alternatives and manifested through perceptible matter. Common sense would suggest that the mind determines the text; when reading a poem, for instance, readers are commonly led to believe that their mind is being shaped by the mind of the poet through the interface of a verbal artifact. Linguistic experience, however, shows that the social possibilities of language are always constraining, to such an extent that cultures often value those who are able to best, but never completely, bend them to the wish of their minds. Constraints to the mind, moreover, emerge even earlier, in its same functioning: cognitive features and cultural habits predetermine signification. One is left wondering whether a grain of freedom still subsists behind all these filters, and percolates through them from the autonomous core of the mind to the permanence of the text. The idea of the possibility of retrieving the intentionality of a mind into the structure of a text is the idea of the author. It is challenged from several points of view: from history, since it is an idea that develops together with the western and modern notion of subjectivity; from technology, since humans are creating increasingly proficient sources of non-human creation; from society, for new semiotic ideologies seem to configure a world in which effective interaction takes place beyond and even without intentional agreement. The special issue of Lexia deals with some of these challenges, within the framework of semiotics, through a stimulating cooperation between Western and Chinese scholars.