Primarily, receipts make emotional assumptions about the reader since they view them as a subject that pay more emphasis towards their feelings. Readers are made to be the subject to emphasize their …show more content…
The ability to give an outlet for a review gives the reader a voice on a medium that is primarily in-argumentative. While a receipt is primarily a source of information and not an opinion-based source, it still gives the reader power in the situation. This allowance of power assumes the emotional needs of the reader. Such anonymity is applied to receipts in the way it is laid out so that every person is given the license to provide insight and personalize it. It is important to note that “a text’s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination.” Because giving a text an author imposes a limit on that text, the text being computer generated really allows the person reading it to directly apply the text to themselves. Barthes makes a valid point regarding “automatic writing” being a more pure portrayal. Considering the receipt, what is more automatic than a machine doing the writing? Barthes mentions that the …show more content…
Receipts emulate the fast-paced nature of the culture. Many people in the North American culture find themselves “caught up in a frenzy of activity” both in their work and personal lives. The receipt displays the fast-paced nature by the previously mentioned large size of the total. By making the total price the largest and most easily understood part of the receipt, there is more emphasis and it allows for a fast-paced interaction to go by more smoothly. Most readers think of these documents as mere “carriers of information” and have come to expect that the documents will deliver just the content needed as quickly as possible. Furthermore, it indicates that the average reader is less interested in reading the entirety of a receipt and it reinforces the notion of “faster is better.” Receipts represent an experience for the reader. As eloquently stated by Levy, “the world is much bigger than any of our plans or projects.” That being said, the plans and projects people experience are what create their world. Due to the objectivity of the receipt in terms of the information recorded, every person will get something different from reading it. People rarely approach a text in the same way, and “even the same person reading a text repeatedly will come away with different feelings each time.” The way receipts are structured gives the impression that receipts represent more