The author's reference to "various signs and symbols" (line 33) functions primarily to

jingjingxiao11111@gmail.com on October 30, 2020

Hi I am not an instructor but I understand your confusion. Let us break down line 33 and that before line 33 to better understand this line reference.

Paragraph 1: This opening paragraph defines reader-response theory, which is formed in reaction to its counterpart formalist literary criticism. Reader response theory is about gathering different interpretations and responses of all readers on the same literature text, whiles formalist literary theory focuses on finding a unified meaning and interpretation from the author of the text by different readers, not how different readers themselves react to the text. The author believes formalist’s view of finding only what author wants the text to convey to be unnecessarily narrow. Thus, we gather from paragraph 1 that the author supports reader response theory despite objections from formalists.

Paragraph 2 until line 33: Those who support formalism believe that their approach is grounded in objective principles and they criticize reader response theory for lacking a standard in interpreting text, since reader response theory can get many different interpretations from different readers who all interpret the same text in their own unique ways.

The author admits in line 33 to 35 that “However, while a literary work is indeed encoded in various signs and symbols that must be translated for the work to be understood and appreciated, it is not a map.” Thus we gather from line 33 to 35 that author believes there should be some level of unified and objective meaning from the text itself as represented in various signs and symbols in the text.

In summary, although the author believes reader can give different interpretation of the same text as advocated by the reader response theory, he still believes a literary work needs to be interpreted in certain unified degree as guided by various signs and symbols in the text, just not to the extreme state that guidance of the text becomes a map.

Line 33 reference to “various signs and symbols" thus primarily functions to
grant that a reader must be guided by the text to some degree, which is the correct answer B.

I hope that I explained it correctly. Please feel free to correct me. Thank you