The familiar information theory diagram may help us to further clarify the relationship of the reader to the author and the text: Speaker-encoding-message-decoding-hearer There is a temptation to substitute author for speaker and to think
of the reader simply as seeking to decode the message in a way parallel to the hearer decoding the message. But in any actual reading, there is only the text and the reader. The speaker, we know, offers many clues to the listener, through emphasis, pitch, rhythm, pauses-and, if face-to-face, facial expression and gesture. The reader finds it necessary to construct the "speaker"-the "voice," the "persona," the "tone"-as part of what he decodes
from the text. Contemporary critical theory has recognized this, but has primarily developed its implications for the author's need to select elements that will produce the effect he desires. Thus T. S. Eliot (1932) developed the notion of the "objective correlative" to refer overlook. The interpretation, however, cannot validly be "of" anything other than the text itself. The effort to avoid "the intentional fallacy" did not, however, lead to a systematic understanding of the reader's contribution.