> You can’t take people’s use of symbols out of the context in which they use them. So: What a symbol means to the writer (or speaker) is supposedly more impor

> You can’t take people’s use of symbols out of the context in which they use them. So: What a symbol means to the writer (or speaker) is supposedly more important than what the symbol means to readers — who (according to the writer) must accommodate themselves to the writer's mindset instead of vice versa. This sender-oriented approach is in contrast to the writer's seeking to serve his readers — and the writer's intended message — by using the readers' language, if you will. (I'm curious whether you've found the sender-oriented approach to work when writing a legal brief for a court or agency — in our joint line of work, the received wisdom is that it's decidedly suboptimal.)