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0.6.3. Topics and Isotopies
Frames and sememic representations are both based on processes of unlimited semiosis, and as such they call for the responsibility of the addressee. Since the semantic encyclopedia is in itself potentially infinite, semiosis is unlimited, and, from the extreme periphery of a given sememe, the center of any other could be reached, and vice versa (see also the Model Q in Theory, 2.12). Since every proposition contains every other proposition (as shown in Chapter 7, on Peirce), a text could generate, by further semantic disclosures, every other text. (By the way, this is exactly what happens in intertextual circulation: the history of literature is a living proof of this hypothesis.)
We have thus to decide how a text, in itself potentially infinite, can generate only those interpretations it can foresee (it is not true that, as Valéry claims, "il n'y a pas de vrai sens d'un texte": we have seen that even the more 'open' among experimental texts direct their own free interpretation and preestablish the movement of their Model Reader). In fact, "a frame may contain a great many details whose supposition is not specifically warranted by the situation" (Winston, 1977:180), and ''it seems obvious that when I organize a party, or when I read a story about such a party, I need not actualize the whole supermarket by the simple fact that I briefly go to the supermarket to get some peanuts for my guests. . . . In a situation in which 'getting peanuts for my guests' is topic . . . the only aspect which is relevant is the successfulness of the act realizing my purpose" (van Dijk, 1976b:38).
Many of the codes and subcodes listed in 0.6.1 do not strictly concern text interpretation. They may also concern single lexemes or sentences (except perhaps for the operations of co-reference). But even at the level of simple sentences, each of these operations risks proving unsuccessful, as many exercises on grammatical ambiguities are still demonstrating: outside a textual framework, green colorless ideas can neither exist nor sleep furiously, and we cannot understand who (or what) are flying planes.
When we find an ambiguous sentence or a small textual portion isolated from any co-text or circumstance of utterance, we cannot disambiguate it without resorting to a presupposed 'aboutness' of the co-text, usually labeled as the textual topic (of which the expressed text is the comment). It is usually detected by formulating a question.
Consider, for instance, the following famous vicious example:
(6) Charles makes love with his wife twice a week. So does John.
This short text allows a malicious reader to make embarrassing inference about the morality of this friendly 'triangle', while a more virtuous

 
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