Editing Stanley Fish (section)

==Interpretive communities==
Fish is best known for his analysis of [[interpretive communities]] &mdash; an offshoot of [[reader-response criticism]]. His work in this field examines how the interpretation of a [[Text (literary theory)|text]] is dependent upon each reader's own subjective experience in one or more communities, each of which is defined as a 'community' by a distinct epistemology. For Fish, a large part of what renders a reader's subjective experience valuable — that is, why it may be considered "constrained" as opposed to an uncontrolled and idiosyncratic assertion of the self — comes from a concept native to the field of linguistics called [[linguistic competence]].

In Fish's source the term is explained as "the idea that it is possible to characterize a linguistic system that every speaker shares."<ref>Wardaugh, Ronald. ''Reading: a Linguistic Perspective''. University of Michigan: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1969. 36, 60.</ref> In the context of literary criticism, he uses this concept to argue that a reader's approach to a text is not completely subjective, and that an internalized understanding of language shared by the native speakers of that given language makes possible the creation of normative boundaries for one's experience with language.{{Citation needed|date=September 2015}}