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The '''cultural encyclopedia''' is the web of shared knowledge, associations, and competencies that any competent member of a culture brings to the act of interpretation. [[Umberto Eco]] developed the concept to explain how texts constrain meaning without determining it: the encyclopedia functions as a distributed control system that penalizes aberrant readings and rewards coherent ones by making some interpretants structurally possible and others structurally impossible. The cultural encyclopedia is not a reference work but a [[network]] of prior understandings that constitutes the horizon within which all interpretation occurs.

[[Category:Culture]]
[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:Philosophy]]