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Eco argues that interpretation is a process of unlimited semiosis—every interpretive act produces new signs that themselves require interpretation, creating an endless chain rather than a closed system. Meaning-making cannot reach a stable conclusion. Yet unlimited semiosis does not mean interpretive anarchy; textual features, intertextual references, and intentionality set boundaries on what interpretations are plausible.
From structuralist semiotics you understand that signs don't carry meaning inherently — they acquire it through their relations to other signs within a system. Saussure's langue is a closed network where each term gets its value from difference. Eco's major contribution is to question the "closed" part: what happens when you try to follow a sign to its ultimate meaning? You find not a stable terminus but another sign, which in turn leads to another, in what Peirce called an interpretant chain. Interpretation doesn't bottom out; it redirects.
The classic illustration is a dictionary. Look up a word: you find other words. Look up those words: you find still more words. No definition reaches outside language to an unmediated meaning; every definition is itself a sign requiring interpretation. This is not a flaw in dictionaries — it is the structure of meaning itself. Eco calls this process unlimited semiosis: the tendency of any sign to generate further signs in an open-ended chain. Applied to literary texts, it means that every interpretive act produces new signs (your interpretation, your phrasing of the interpretation, the framework you used) that are themselves available for further interpretation.
This might sound like it leads to the conclusion that all interpretations are equally valid, but Eco explicitly refuses that inference. He distinguishes three levels of intention: the intentio auctoris (what the author intended), the intentio operis (what the text itself makes available, based on its structure and codes), and the intentio lectoris (what the reader brings). Eco argues that the text's intention — not the author's biography and not pure reader projection — is the legitimate constraint on interpretation. An interpretation of Hamlet that requires ignoring the play's language, structure, and genre conventions is not a freer reading; it is an irresponsible one. The text can be read in multiple ways, but not in *any* way.
The practical critical move Eco offers is to ask: what does this text *invite* versus what does it *allow* versus what does it *resist*? An open text (Eco's term for texts structured to generate multiple valid readings) invites varied completion; a closed text (designed to produce one preferred decoding) resists drift. The interesting cases are texts that appear closed but generate unexpected readings — or texts that appear open but actually constrain interpretation more than they seem. Eco's framework gives critics a vocabulary for distinguishing interpretation from overinterpretation without resorting to authorial intention as the arbiter.
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