Intentional Misunderstanding:A Perspective From Intersubjectivity And Intentionality

As a special language communicative strategy,intentional misunderstanding is widely used in daily life.Intentional misunderstanding is the result of the interaction of a speaker and a hearer,in which the hearer intentionally distorts the purpose of the speaker's utterance on the premise that he has already understood correctly what the speaker means to achieve certain communicative goals under the guidance of intentionality.The way the hearer accomplishes this process is to make use of the language features of multi-context,polysemy,and ambiguity.Because its special methods of interpretation and expression differ from daily communication,intentional misunderstanding is well worth further study and analysis.It has gained extensive attention in studies both at home and abroad.Based on previous research,this thesis studies the language communicative action of intentional misunderstanding from the perspective of intersubjectivity and intentionality.This thesis attempts to answer the following three questions:(1)What are the conditions to accomplish intentional misunderstanding?;(2)How does the hearer perform intentional misunderstanding?;and(3)What are the pragmatic functions of intentional misunderstanding?The linguistic data analyzed in this paper come from a widely known American situation comedy,The Big Bang Theory.The paper illustrates the preconditions,operating process and pragmatic functions of intentional misunderstanding with the typical examples selected from this comedy.First,there must be two basic preconditions if the hearer wants to accomplish the intentional misunderstanding of a speaker's utterance:(1)the objective condition---speaker's utterance and(2)the subjective condition---the hearer's intentionality.There are many hidden uncertain factors in the speaker's utterance,such as polysemy,deixis,and structural ambiguity,which provide the hearer with a chance to exhibit intentional misunderstanding.The hearer's intentionality motivates him to understand and reply to the speaker with intentional misunderstanding.Meeting these two basic preconditions,the hearer starts to operate the process of intentional misunderstanding in his mind.According to Habermas'(1989)intersubjectivity,when people start to communicate,they become involved in a kind of interpersonal relationship in which participants think from the perspectives of themselves and the other party to reach a consensus of mutual understanding.To reach an agreement,both parties will follow three validity claims unconsciously.This paper attempts to analyze intentional misunderstanding from these three aspects.Intentional misunderstanding is realized because the hearer deliberately transforms the context in which the speaker's utterance occurs.To be understood and reach an agreement with the hearer,the speaker has to say something based on the three validity claims,which are the truth claim,rightness claim and truthfulness claim.The speaker will state a true proposition,a sentence that he thinks is right and an utterance that can express his real intention so that the hearer can understand,and they can reach a consensus together.The hearer will speculate on the speaker's real intention in accordance with the speaker's utterance and the context of the conversation.However,sometimes the hearer will ignore the correct understanding and respond with an intentional misunderstanding rather than follow the speaker's intention and give an ideal reply to demonstrate his own intentions.To make his reply compatible,the hearer will transform the present context into a possible context of the speaker's utterance.In other words,the hearer's reply follows the three validity claims of conversation,too.If we scrutinize the reply,it is not as inappropriate as it appears;rather,it demonstrates the hearer's communicative intention in a skilful way.Both sides are able to deduce each other's intention and the conversation terminates successfully.This paper finds that intentional misunderstanding can achieve some pragmatic functions,which is also why the hearer chooses intentional misunderstanding as a communicative action.The main pragmatic functions include creating a humorous effect,saving face,building harmonious interpersonal relationships,resolving a dilemma,fighting back,expressing dissatisfaction and avoiding specific topics.This is a preliminary study of intentional misunderstanding based on intersubjectivity and intentionality,but it draws some preliminary conclusions about the operating mechanism of intentional misunderstanding,which can deepen our understanding of intentional misunderstanding and lead to more related research.It also provides some guidance towards verbal communication practice.