In this chapter I focus on the meaning potential of texts and conceptualisations of the reader/listener/viewer who engages with it. There have been theoretical shifts in perceptions of a text and its reception. In an article on news analysis, Meinhof points to early text-based studies that work with ‘closed text models’, according to which meaning is assumed to originate in the text and interpreters of it are mere ‘reading subjects constructed by the text’ (1994: 213). If considered at all, the addressee is treated as ‘a fiction embodied in the writer's rhetorical choices’ (Hyland 2005: 12). Meinhofs subject is news analysis; as examples, she cites the Glasgow University Media Group (1976, 1980), early critical linguistics (Fowler et al. 1979) and screen theory (Heath and Skirrow 1977). However, her observation applies equally to analyses of other textual forms. Names for this fiction include the ‘inscribed’ reader (Volosinov [1923] 1973) of Marxist philosophy of language, the ‘postulated reader’ (Booth 1961) of literary theory, the ‘model reader’ (Eco 1979) of semiotics, the ‘implied reader’ (Leech and Short 1981) of stylistics and the ‘ideal spectator’ (Brunsdon 1982) of screen theory.

In contrast with text-based studies, research using reader-based models operates ‘with a more open version of what the text means’ (Meinhof1994: 213). Meinhofcites as examples reception studies, where actual viewers are consulted (e.g. Morley 1980), and approaches that attend to the circulation of meanings and specifically to potential discrepancies between inscribed and actual addressees (e.g., Hall et al. 1980).