The text receiver is the person (or people) who reads, watches or listens to the text. They rely on the cues and devices in the text to help them interpret it.
Depending on the type of text in question, there are many other words that you might use to refer to the text receiver. For example:
- Reader
- Audience
- Listener
- Viewer
- Spectator
- Addressee
The important thing to know about the text receiver is that they contribute to the process of making meaning. It doesn’t matter how many fancy words or devices the text producer uses. They still need someone to interpret their work.
Text receivers also add their own thoughts, biases, experiences and context (schema) to what they read when making meaning. That’s why two people can read the same text and get completely different interpretations. It’s (usually) not that one of them is wrong and the other is right. It’s that their life and context have shaped the way they read the text. We call this bottom-up processing.
For example, when I watched Lilo and Stitch as a child, I identified with Lilo and thought that Nani was a bore. Now that I’m older, I empathise with Nani. Although I understand Lilo, I still cringe at some of her actions when she gets Nani in trouble with Cobra Bubbles. This is because I’ve grown older, and my schema has changed.
Text producers can’t force every text receiver to have the same interpretation. However, they do write their work with a certain type (demographic) of text receiver in mind. This helps them to make choices about how they write their work, as they can predict which devices and words will have their desired effect on their chosen text receiver.
The person they’ve written the work for is called the “implied reader”. You might know them as a “target audience”.