meaning

Well, Barthes said that the birth of the reader was at the expense of the death of the author, so we can take that to mean that all meaning is inferred rather than insinuated; no meaning is inherrant in anything, all meanings are drawn from our (as readers/viewers/listeners etcetera) reactions to these things, not from the things themselves. However, I find this somewhat simple and problematic. A also find the idea that meaning comes exclusively from an 'author' problematic. I would suggest therefore that meaning emerges at a point of interpretation between the author and the reader. It's as if the reader is a chef, and the author supplies the ingedients, much like Ready Steady Cook (no I'm not being flippant here). If the author does not supply eggs, the reader cannot make an omelette. However, if the author does supply eggs, the reader does not necessarily have to make an omelette.

The dictionary.

"He kicked back, gliding over his instruments--a green docking diagram pulsed on his central screen--and snagged the frame of Case’s g-web. He pulled himself down and picked at the tape of his package with a thick, chipped thumbnail. “Some man in China say th’ truth comes out this,” he said, unwrapping an ancient, oilslick Remington automatic shotgun, its barrel chopped off a few millimeters in front of the battered forestock. The shoulderstock had been removed entirely, replaced with a wooden pistolgrip wound with dull black tape. He smelled of sweat and ganja."

"he pulled himself down AND PICKED AT the tape of HIS PACKAGE"

I agree with Sick and would add the Althusserian rider that the codes of language, which are culturally, that is, socially, determined, place limits on this discourse, and that if the printed word is to have any meaning then it must come from the very edge of fucky-bum-boo.

"Fucky-bum-boo-boo", please.

"His eyes slid down the front of her dress."

"'What?!' he ejaculated."