Page 163 - Journal of Library Science in China 2020 Vol.46

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162 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.12, 2020

Material forms and textual meaning: Review of Donald Francis McKenzie’s
theory and methodology of sociology of text
〇a*
LI Mingjie〇 & LI Ruilong
In history of books and reading, McKenzie’s sociology of texts is a widely accepted theory. This
theory mainly stemmed from bibliography but assimilated ideas of literary criticism, the Annales
and Saussurean Linguistics. Based on Zima’s intertextuality theory, McKenzie’s sociology of texts
thought emphasizes that the material forms of books and non-book texts both as texts contain
marks of printing, reading, collection and revision. This theory has combined the physical forms
and meaning of texts, associated bibliography with literary criticism, and broadened the research
field of Physical Bibliography. As an interdisciplinary theory, it opened up a new school of history
of book and reading study that focused on the relationship of readers, physical forms and meaning
of texts in the 1980s to the 1990s.
According to the study of printing process in the 17th and the 18th centuries in England,
McKenzie concluded the principle of printing as “concurrent production”, which means that
the printing process was in a complex and highly volatile contexts, and this principle should
apply to production of all kinds of texts. McKenzie’s sociology of texts transcended the “pure”
bibliography. Some bibliographers like Greg concerned only the symbolic meaning within texts,
which was considered as fixed, and their study excluded the affections which were not from
authors. However, McKenzie stated that if a medium in any sense effected a message, then
bibliography could not exclude from its own proper concerns the relation between form, function,
and symbolic meaning. Furthermore, the texts McKenzie studied were not only written or printed
signs on pieces of paper or parchment, but also oral, visual and digital forms. All forms of texts
could be object of bibliography. At the same time, sociology of texts claimed the role of physical
forms in literary criticism. Before McKenzie, literary criticism mostly considered texts as self-
contained, which could reveal themselves. So texts were always studied separately, or with a
specific element like authors or readers. This study could not reveal the structures and connections
within texts. McKenzie thought that except for texts themselves, authors, readers and text forms
also mattered in the construction and understanding of textual meaning. He tried to associate
bibliography with literary criticism, and promoted a comprehensive study of texts.
Along with the new idea of “concurrent production”, McKenzie also suggested that bibliography
needed a new methodology. He thought that as a bibliographical methodology, deduction applied
more than induction. Bibliography was characterized by multiple and ingenious hypotheses, and
a narrow range of theories was less likely to embrace the complex possibilities of organization
within even a quite small printing house. Truths derived by induction were always vulnerable
and subject to modification when new evidence came to hand. With deduction, distinctions of
different cases may be entertained, and the hypothetical nature of bibliography could be retained.
* Correspondence should be addressed to LI Mingjie, Email: limingjie@whu.edu.cn, ORCID: 0000-0002-1876-9040.