"lgs' comment in response to my question about the meaning of "cinematic pietas" is very useful to me in trying to sort out what i admitted was my own confusion about the matter , and i'm grateful for it . . . but i'm puzzled by one of its conclusions, to wit: "In order to analyse the meaning of "cinematic pietas" we do not need to answer any of these questions, but to analyse how "meaning" arises we do." i'm sorry to say i just can't imagine how we can construe meaning in a single particular case if we don't first understand in general what it is that we do, or ought to do, when we construe meaning at all" Wrote Mike Frank. When we are construing meaning we are *doing* something different than when we are understanding the workings of meaning in general. Semiotics is not a homogeneous field but a motley one. Producing meaning and modeling meaning making are 2 different "language" games. When we produce meanings from a text aren't we playing a game where we make up the rules as we go along? Don't we sometimes do this without any rule binding us, and at other times do it with all the rigor of a game of chess or better one of those impossibly elaborate drinking games favored by certain undergrads? Aren't these both ways of producing meaning? When we make a theory of meaning however we retrospectively give all those games (or practices) homogeneity and say that we have been doing the same thing all along. We try to give, *ex post facto,* a set of rules to what we were doing whereas those rules never crossed our minds when we were interpreting films, reading books, etc. When we are engaged in a language game we think of rules as little as we think of the grammar of our "native" language when we speak it. Grammar only arises full blown in our minds when need to explain our language to someone who doesn't speak it, such as a foreigner or a child. (The scandal of this is that is means that all semiotics is historical.) For more on these points see Ludwig Wittgenstein's *Philosophical Investigations.* lgs ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]