Intertext, Paralanguage, and Icebergs

In a not too distant future, historians and cultural anthropologists may well look back on this age and decide the hyperlink should take its place alongside fire, the wheel, and agriculture. As a species, we can communicate across space and time and this innocuous little software device is shifting that paradigm in ways we cannot yet appreciate.

Last week's post mentioned subtext and theme and asked if a distinction existed between the two. To my mind they are not the same. Theme is to strategic as subtext is to tactical. But that little innocuous piece of software connected me to individuals who beg to differ. Indeed, believe the two are synonymous. Even the New Oxford American Dictionary agrees. "Subtext: an underlying and often distinct theme in a piece of writing or conversation." And our British friends share the same definition via the Oxford Dictionary. Merriam played it a little cute: "the implicit or metaphorical meaning of a literary or musical passage." Implicit equals subtext, metaphorical, theme?

Now, having already declared my bias, I'm going to make an editorial decision and not include the various arguments I uncovered. They simply are all over the place. Most of them by literary elitists who exposed their earnestness by redefining subtext with terms like 'intertext', 'paralanguage', 'metamessage', or conflating it with connotation.

Social scientist (did sociologist lose its panache?) and anthropologist Gregory Bateson defined metamessage as "any message need[ing] to be interpreted in the frame of reference established by a superordinate message cueing how the textual message is intended." Obviously, Gregory never met Oxford or Merriam.

So to keep the discussion at a level we mere mortals are accustomed to, I'll offer some thoughts on the subject and hopefully spur others to share theirs.

A book can be written, and acceptably so, to provide nothing more than an entertaining story. No overarching theme necessary. And though I indicated last week it is never explicitly stated, the following passage would raise no eyebrows for me.

Alicia never experienced hope. Life hadn't given her any.

Nonetheless, the author has at most one mulligan left to again hit us over the head with a reference to Alicia's lack of hope. Subtext, on the other hand, has no limits but cannot exist alone. Consider a gushing boutique owner.

That scarf looks just wonderful on you. Cashmere is such an exquisite fabric.

Beyond the visuals, we can discern nothing from this exchange unless the plot has already established the customer as the Cashmere Strangler. The takeaway for us as authors is that plot points signal opportunities to shape character dialog and interactions with richness, depth, and texture. But might Hemingway's Iceberg Theory relate to subtext? I repeat a portion of my 7/16 post.

"Hemingway believed a story's deeper context and meaning should not occupy the foreground but exist within implied shadow. That like an iceberg whose surface masks the massive bulk beneath, what one leaves out of a story is as important as what one puts in."

On review the answer is clearly, no. Hemingway discussed deliberate and considered omission of words and sentences. Humorous or satirical works aside, subtext is not something 'left out'. In fact, once a plot point emerges, subtext in consequent passages and actions becomes inescapable.

Finally, before I begin dancing on the head of a pin, though a story might not have a central theme, its presence and development introduces something more powerful than a hyperlink. Something ethereal, sublime. An element that transforms a book into a novel.

As always, I welcome your thoughts and comments.