Understanding and interpretation (I)
This two-part study aims to analyze the complex linguistic, pragmatic and cultural mechanisms involved in the act of text (discourse) understanding. The fundamental questions concerning this issue are as follows: How do we understand texts and what specific competences are involved in understanding? What exactly causes differences in understanding? And then, what are the causes of misunderstanding? Why, despite differences in understanding, can we find dominant ways of understanding texts? In short, what is understanding? Is there a relation between understanding and interpretation? And finally, what is interpretation?
The first part of the study starts from the analysis of an ordinary type of discourse (the transcript of a video), and here we identify and discuss three types of competences involved in the process of understanding: the linguistic competence, the interdiscursive competence, and the cultural competence. The interactive dynamics of these three competences generates valid and functional meanings in a specific context. Meaning does not represent the objective or ultimate truth, but it is a good functioning of the discourse in the given context. Therefore, accidents of understanding are unavoidable, and they can be caused by the malfunctioning of one of the three competences involved.
Keywords: understanding process, interpretation, linguistic competence, interdiscursive competence, cultural competence, frames, cognitive linguistics.
1.[1] cf. Ducrot, Schaeffer, 1996: 384.
2.[1] D. Maingueneau observă, în cartea citată, „legătura obscură dar necesară, între natura unui discurs şi apartenenţa la un grup sau o clasă (1984: 50).
3.[1] Cele trei competenţe amintite mai sus sunt, luate împreună, compatibile cu ceea ce Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni (1990: 33) definea drept competenţă comunicativă globală sau hiper-competenţă („hyper-compétence”) şi care include patru competenţe principale: (a) competenţa lingvistică; (b) competenţa enciclopedică sau culturală, care include informaţiile despre lume ale comunicatorului; (c) competenţa logică; (d) competenţa retorico-pragmatică, care presupune cunoaşterea maximelor conversaţionale (v. Grice 1979). Eliminând competenţa logică, care ţine mai degrabă de un principiu de economie al atitudinii legate de înţelegere, şi dimensiunea prescriptivă a maximelor conversaţionale, care ţine de un principiu de economie al atitudinii conversaţionale, competenţa retorico-pragmatică poate fi gândită ca fiind asemănătoare competenţei interdiscursive. De remarcat şi faptul că în paginile de faţă ne interesează exclusiv competenţele necesare înţelegerii textelor şi nu competenţele comunicative care presupun ceva în plus: interacţiune subiectivă, schimbare de roluri, relaţii de autoritate configurate contextual etc.
