1. Introduction: the problematics of this study.................................................................................. 15
1.1 The questions ................................................................................................................................. 18
1.2 ‘Literature’..................................................................................................................................... 19
1.3 ‘Reading’........................................................................................................................................ 30
1.3.1 Criticism, interpretation, and the study of literature ........................................................... 30
1.3.2 ‘Reader response’, and literary reception study .................................................................. 49
1.3.3 Media reception study and the sociology of cultural consumption.................................... 56
1.4 ‘Discourse analysis’ ....................................................................................................................102
1.5 Discursive approaches to reader and reception study..............................................................113
1.6 The world outside discourse and the problem of metatheoretical regress ..............................124
1.7 The data cited in this study .........................................................................................................130
1.8 Introduction to the ‘primary texts’ .............................................................................................134
1.9 A guide to this study ....................................................................................................................148
2. Speech acts, intentions, and uncommunicativeness:
a theory of literature and of how literature is used.........................................................................151
2.1 Introduction..................................................................................................................................151
2.2 Communicative circuits...............................................................................................................153
2.3 Communication and signification...............................................................................................156
2.3.1 Communication: speech act theory ....................................................................................157
2.3.2 Communication: intentionalism .........................................................................................159
2.3.3 Signification: the functioning of the mark .........................................................................162
2.4. Literary intentions ......................................................................................................................169
2.4.1 Locutionary intention ..........................................................................................................169
2.4.2 Illocutionary intention.........................................................................................................173
2.4.3 Perlocutionary intention......................................................................................................190
2.5. Literary speech acts....................................................................................................................193
2.5.1 Speech act theories of literature, and literary theories of speech acts..............................193
2.5.2 Literary works and speech-like actions..............................................................................207
2.6. Analysis: The reception of The Satanic Verses as a communication from its author............208
2.7. Concluding note..........................................................................................................................227