It is an act of communication and as such it takes part of the communication process. For the former it implies decoding (act of looking at the language code to interpret a message). In order to decode messages in literature we must go through several stages:

1. Linguistic stage: it is located in the denotative plane because if we do not know the meaning of words we will not be able to understand the message.
2. Volitional stage: this is the impulse level, driven by will: “I like it”, “I do not like it”, “I read it or I stop reading it”.
3. Reader level stage: it is located in the connotative, subjective and experiential plane of the person according to his social and cultural context.
4. Author stage: purely objective; what he wants to tell us in an analytic or synthetic way.