Part III - INTENTIONS IN DISCOURSE
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
The chapters in Part III examine exactly how intentions play an important role in the mental processes by which people construct meaningful interpretations of spoken and written language. I describe in some detail how speakers and listeners cooperate and coordinate with each other to achieve successful communication. In doing so, I emphasize that interpretation is probabilistic in the extent to which communicative intentions shape the experience of meaning. One of the great obstacles in the debates over intentions in interpretation is that it is assumed that people either always or never infer authorial intentions. Yet authorial intentions may contribute only partial information to people about how to interpret speech and texts. In many cases, people infer unintended meanings of messages that still fit the context, but these meanings, nonetheless, depend on the recognition that speakers have some other meanings they are trying to express. Writing and reading, just like speaking and listening, are best characterized as social transactions which include the specific attempt to achieve successful communication of intentional meanings.
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- Intentions in the Experience of Meaning , pp. 107 - 108Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999