Language layers : knowledge, understanding or interpretation

الملخص EN

Two issues basic to any inquiry into the nature of human knowledge are how language contributes to our understanding of the world, and how our beliefs about the world inform our understanding of the language.

So, anyone concerned with the nature of human communication and those concerned with the teaching of language, inevitably, figure large in such a group.

Therefore, the main assumption within the issue is that language consists, at least, of a set of forms which can be described at various levels: sounds, word, sentence formation and discourse structure associated with some aspects of meaning.

However, it is proper to discuss a language not as a collection of texts, grammars and dictionaries but as a vehicle of communication.

The paper, in this vein, interrogates the availability of a simple ‘correct’ interpretation of an utterance where listeners have to make an effort to work out what speakers mean by what they say.

There is a belief that interpretation is a difficult and risky process with no guarantee of a satisfactory outcome, even if you have correctly identified the words and correctly worked out the syntactic structure of the sentence.