The Repository @ St. Cloud State

Open Access Knowledge and Scholarship

Date of Award

8-2004

Culminating Project Type

Thesis

Degree Name

English: M.A.

Department

English

College

College of Liberal Arts

First Advisor

Donna Gorrell

Third Advisor

Bradley Chisholm

Keywords and Subject Headings

Rhetoric, Textual Analysis, Semiotics

Abstract

No piece of writing can contain every detail, every word said, every experience related to a story. Something is inevitably missing; there is a gap--or in some cases, many gaps--where information, examples, or details have been excluded. Often, these gaps are used to create clarity (by simplifying a text), emphasis (by focusing on one detail, rather than another), and even style (by manipulating the tone and delivery). These textual gaps, however, also have a more dramatic purpose.

Texts are shaped as much by what is included in them as by what is not included. The omission of information shifts the text from written to implied, allowing readers to fill the gaps in their minds--a process known as closure in art--to create a more personalized, engaging, and believable text.

PROBLEM:

Despite scholars' and writers ' theories of omissions in text, unexplored areas and unanswered questions remain. For example, are there identifiable ways to categorize gaps and better understand how information is omitted from a text? How do readers understand gaps that are left by omission? Is a text strengthened when readers infer missing information?

The answers to such questions ·address a critical problem building in our society where readers lack the tools to recognize and analyze conclusions they derive from gaps they encounter. By exploring the answers to these questions, this text provides readers with the tools they currently lack, teachers with a new method for structuring their discussions, and scholars with a new foundation from which they can dissect and further explore textual gaps.

This thesis explores how information is both omitted from a text and, consequently, filled in readers ' minds. It highlights historical foundations of the discussion of textual omissions, including semiotic theories of gap-filling processes and various textual gap categories that have been offered by scholars of different disciplines. Finally, it seeks to clarify and categorize gaps for future application by readers, scholars, and teachers alike.

SUMMARY:

Gaps are defined and divided into five main categories (syntax, inconsequential, ambiguous, dramatic, and cropped). This thesis highlights the characteristics of each, offers examples of each, and discusses the ways readers fill the different types of gaps. Finally, an in-depth rhetorically based exploration of one category (dramatic gaps) uncovers the enthymemic structure of omission and, in doing so, the interactive benefit that stems from that structure.

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