Formation Mechanisms of Misunderstanding and Deliberate Misinterpretation

School of Foreign Languages,Xi’an Shiyou University,Xi’an,China Email:lindeng20100101@163.com

[Abstract]Misunderstanding and deliberate misinterpretation are totally different pragmatic phenomena in verbal communication.The former is about the result of verbal communication while the latter a kind of pragmatic strategy.This paper analyzes the different formation mechanisms of the two linguistic phenomena.

[Keywords]misunderstanding;deliberate misinterpretation;formation mechanism

INTRODUCTION

Language use is to some extent a selection process where language users take such factors as language itself and speakers’own conditions into consideration.Verschueren(1999)argued that it is the variability,negotiability and adaptability that make the human selection possible.These characteristics provide perfect evidence that lan⁃guage itself is selectable and changeable.Successful communication is only achieved on the basis of language us⁃ers’sensible selection,careful negotiation and wise adaptation of the language.

In specific contexts,people may adopt different pragmatic strategies to achieve their own communicative pur⁃poses.However,these strategies may be strictly constrained by various factors.The vagueness and the polyphonic ambiguities of language,together with the language users’mutual knowledge,social cultural factors and psychologi⁃cal factors,may work together to influence communication.In addition,for certain purposes,people may deliberately misinterpret others’intentions.The abundance of implicatures and inferences in daily conversations provides vari⁃ous sources of the formation of misunderstanding and deliberate misinterpretations(DMI).

SOME BASICS ABOUT MISUNDERSTANDING AND DMI

Conceptualizing Misunderstanding

Misunderstanding is what happens when the hearer didn’t get the whole picture of the speaker’s intentions.Scholars tried to dissect it from different perspectives.

Yus(1999a)distinguished two types of misunderstandings:a)the hearer fails to select the appropriate interpre⁃tation from among all the possible ones in the context;b)the hearer fails to handle the optimal contextual information form the social cultural environment.

Zong(2003)held that misunderstanding is always discussed in terms of the result of understanding.Under the framework of Relevance Theory,Zong(2004)distinguished two types of misunderstandings:misunderstanding of the verbal meaning and misunderstanding of the verbal implicature.

Conceptualizing DMI

He and Shen(2004)defined DMI as a kind of linguistic phenomenon under which language users may take ad⁃vantage of particular verbal context and the vague/problematic expressions of the other speaker and intentionally mis⁃interpret them so as to achieve certain communicative purposes.And a step further,they identified three characteris⁃tics of DMI:

a)DMI is always carried out on the basis correct understanding of the other speaker;

b)DMI emphasizes the intentionality of the speaker,that is,on the basis of the correct understanding of the oth⁃er speaker,he intentionally misinterprets others’intentions.It is a manipulation of the speaker on verbal communi⁃cation;

c)The speaker views DMI as a kind of communication strategy,through which to achieve certain purposes.

He and Shen(2004)argued that DMI and misunderstanding are different in nature.Normally misunderstanding would result in communication failure while DMI is not necessarily the case.If used appropriately,DMI would bring about unexpected effects,which would facilitate successful communication.

However,Sun(2005),claimed that DMI is actually the marked form of misunderstanding and the misunder⁃standing(unconscious misunderstanding)as we know is the unmarked form of misunderstanding.

This paper deems that that misunderstanding is always unconscious.And it is quite different from DMI since misunderstanding is usually discussed in terms of the result in verbal communication while DMI is always about the strategy language user may use in verbal communication for their own purposes.Simply put,misunderstanding and DMI do not belong to the same category except that they are both pragmatic issues.Here below an analysis of the for⁃mation mechanisms is presented to help better understand the two fundamentally different yet closely related prag⁃matic phenomena.

FORMATION MECHANISM OF MISUNDERSTANDING

Zong(2005)believed that misunderstanding could be attributed to two fundamental factors.One is the verbal factor of the speaker,the other is the psychological aspect of the speaker.And the verbal factor can be further divid⁃ed into the encyclopedic knowledge of the language and the vagueness of the utterances.

Zong(2005)’s understanding actually corresponds to that of Yus(1998),who summarized the roots of misunder⁃standing into three categories:a)the communicator differs in how to use and understand meaning of words; b)some utterances that contain ambiguities or ironic meaning may lead to misunderstanding;and c)lack of the common ency⁃clopedic knowledge of the language may lead to misunderstanding.

Sperber and Wilson(1995,p.16)maintained that‘A mismatch between the context envisaged by the speaker and the one actually used by the hearer may result in misunderstanding’.This highlights the importance of context,which is perfectly consistent with the idea of Verschueren(1999),who maintained that language use is the process of making choices in contexts,and interpretation is the process of making the right choices adaptable to the correspond⁃ing contexts.Verschueren(1999)identified two types of contexts:communicative context and linguistic context.The former includes the mental world,the social world and the physical world while the latter contextual cohesion,inter⁃textuality and sequencing.This paper analyzes misunderstanding from the perspectives of linguistic context and com⁃municative context.

Linguistic context and misunderstanding

Linguistic contexts constitute the origin of misunderstanding.The same sentence,spoken in different linguistic contexts,may bring about different interpretations and therefore inevitably lead to misunderstanding.Below is the analysis of misunderstanding at different levels of linguistic contexts(misunderstanding at the level of text is not dis⁃cussed since in daily conversations this kind of misunderstanding seldom happens unless the speaker has been try⁃ing to mislead the hearer).

Misunderstanding at the level of phonetics&phonology

Words or phrases in continuous utterances may cause misunderstanding.Example 1)shows that a‘green house’is rather different form a‘greenhouse’.

1)A:Where have you been the whole afternoon?

B:Oh,a green house near the supermarket.←

A:Really!I never know there is a greenhouse there.Next Sunday I’m going to take my son there,you know,to pick some vegetables by ourselves and to get contact with the nature …

(←refers to where misunderstanding happens)

Misunderstanding at the level of lexicon

Words with two or more meanings are likely to cause misunderstanding.In conversation 2),A is asking whether the position of manager is occupied while B is understanding it as the place of the manager’s office is empty.Hence the misunderstanding.

2)A:Is the office of the manager vacant?←

B:Yes.

A:Can I be one of the applicants?

B:……?

Misunderstanding at the level of syntax

The same linguistic form or more specifically the same syntactic form may have more than one interpretation.That’s where misunderstanding arises.

3)(On a long-distance coach)

Speaker A(to speaker B):Ask the driver what time we get to Birmingham.

Speaker B(to driver):Could you tell me when we get to Birmingham,please?←

Driver:Don’t worry,love,it’s a big place—I don’t think it’s possible to miss it!

As is shown in 3),the misunderstanding lies in the syntactic structure of speaker B.Speaker B intends it to be an object clause,but the driver misunderstands it as an adverbial.

Communicative context and misunderstanding

Misunderstanding always happens in utterances where the language user’s mental world and his relation with the social world and physical world play an important role.

Misunderstanding in the mental world

According to Verschueren(1999,p.87),‘verbal interaction is no doubt communication from mind to mind’.The mental world of the language user may include his personality,emotion,desire,motivation,intention and so on.These factors will surely influence the interpretation of utterances.

4)Old Lady:“Is this stop Bloomington?”(An old lady asked the bus driver)

Driver:“No,Ma am.”

Old Lady:“Well,please tell me when we get here,”she requested.←

Driver:“I’ll do that,”promised the driver.

(Later,the driver got careless and passed through Bloomington before he realized it.He apologized to the other passengers,turned around,and drove back.Then he said to the old lady)

Driver:“This is the town where you wanted to get out.”

Old Lady:“Who wanted to get out?”

Driver:“You did.”

Old Lady:“No,”she said,“my daughter told me that when I pass through this town,I should take my pills.”

Here the misunderstanding comes from the driver’s false interpretation of the old lady’s intention.She intend⁃ed to let the driver to remind her of the pill time,but the driver thought she intended to get off at Bloomington.

Misunderstanding in the social world

Verschueren(1999,p.90)maintained that,‘there is no principled limit to the range of social factors that lin⁃guistic choice is inter-adaptable with.Most of them have to do with properties of social setting or institutions.’

5)Customer:Waiter,will the pancakes be long?←

Waiter:No,sir.Round.

Taking the social factors into consideration,it is easy to figure out this is a conversation in a restaurant.The cus⁃tomer is getting impatient and he is complaining about the large amount of time he has spent waiting for the pan⁃cakes.As for the waiter,he is not willing to take the risk of intentionally lightening the air with the customer.Obvi⁃ously he misunderstands the word‘long’as about the shape of the pancakes.

Misunderstanding in the physical world

Temporal and spatial references are the most important relations in the physical world.Take the temporal refer⁃ences for example,the confusion among the event time,time of utterance and reference time would often lead to mis⁃understanding.

6)Old Jones comes back from vacation,and he gets an-email from his daughter which reads‘… I hope you’ll have a nice holiday!’Old Jones gets confused,‘Isn’t it too late to wish me a nice holiday?’he complained.

The misunderstanding comes from the confusion between the event time and the utterance time.

FORMATION MECHANISM OF DELIBERATE MISINTERPRETATION

He and Shen(2004)regarded DMI as a kind of pragmatic strategy whose formation mechanism lies in two trig⁃gers.One is the economical verbal information in natural language which molds the loosely connected syntactic struc⁃tures and amazingly multifarious logic relations.This lays the foundation for DMI.The other is the problematic utter⁃ance in verbal interactions.The ambiguity in natural language provides the prerequisites for multi-layered interpre⁃tations for each utterance.

Information Principle and Deliberate Misinterpretation

According to the Information Principle of Levinson(1987),people tend to follow the Maxim of Minimization in verbal interactions.That is to speak as less as is need in the real discourse.Besides,Information Principle also stipu⁃lates that people always follow the Enrichment Rule in verbal communication.The hearer keeps enriching the infor⁃mation of the speaker until he believes he has figured out the intention of the speaker.Maxim of Minimization pro⁃vides the least information as is required by the situation and this provides foundation for the Enrichment Rule.Thus,the Enrichment Rule is where DMI is possible.

7)(Two friends are chatting in the pub.)

A:My wife doesn’t appreciate me.Does yours?

B:I wouldn’t know.I’ve never heard her mention your name.

In the above conversation,when A asks whether B’s wife appreciates B,he follows the Maxim of Minimization.So he asks‘Does yours’,which could be interpreted as both‘Does your wife appreciate you’and‘Does your wife appreciate me’.But in this situation,obviously‘Does your wife appreciate you’is the right interpretation.But B in⁃tentionally misinterprets it as‘Does your wife appreciate me’perhaps for fun.

Problematic utterance and Deliberate Misinterpretation

Apart from the stingy information,the problematic nature of speakers’utterances may also be a formation mechanism of DMI.

Deliberate Misinterpretation caused by Utterance content

Utterance content is the part that is directly stated.Even the directly stated part may give rise to DMI.In con⁃versation 8),the bookseller wonders whether the customer wants something light or serious.But for the sense of hu⁃mor,the customer intentionally takes the word‘light’as in the sense of weight.

8)Customer:I would like a book,please.

Bookseller:Something light?

Customer:That doesn’t matter.I have my car with me.

Deliberate Misinterpretation caused Illocutionary force

Mostly people don’t just produce well-formed utterances with no purpose.The illocutionary force of the utter⁃ance sometimes may be another source of DMI.

9)Mother:Jimmy,could you pass me the salt?

Jimmy:Yes.(but without any actions)

In conversation 9),Jimmy surely understands that his mother wants him to pass the salt instead of asking him whether he has the ability to pass the salt.He deliberately misinterprets his mother’s request as solely a question.

Deliberate Misinterpretation caused Implicature

Sperber & Wilson(1995)believed the implicature must be inferred from what the speaker said.That’s where DMI comes into being.

10)(After dating for some months,the girl wants the boy to make a proposal for marriage.But the boy does not want to marry at present.)

GIRL:Darling,I want to dance like this forever.

BOY:Don’t you ever want to improve?

In conversation 10),by saying‘Darling,I want to dance like this forever’,the girl really wants to perpetuate their relationship and suggests perhaps the boy should propose.But the boy does not want to marry at present,so he intentionally interprets the girl’s intention as talking about the dancing skill.In this way,not only does he realize his own intention,but also he avoids making the girl get embarrassed.

CONCLUSION

Misunderstanding and DMI are totally different linguistic phenomena.The former is about the result of verbal communication while the latter a kind of pragmatic strategy.A discussion of the different formation mechanisms ex⁃pects to give a full picture of them.

Acknowledgements

The research is sponsored by the“2019 Teaching Reform Research Project”of Xi’an Shiyou University:Re⁃search on SPOC-based Blended Teaching of College English,and“2019 Graduate Education and Teaching Reform Project”of Xi’an Shiyou University:Construction of English Curriculum System for Professional Postgraduate Stu⁃dents on the Basis of Needs Analysis(2019-X-JG-015),and“The Thirteenth‘Five-Year Plan’Project 2017 for Education Sciences of Shannxi Province”(SGH17V078).