MISUNDERSTANDING: A FACT OF LANGUAGE OR OF SPEECH?

We might well say that the primary vocation of language is communication and that language is above all the tool that we, speakers, use to ensure this communication and the interaction with others, we only have to observe closely our speeches and our acts of communication to realize that we are not always able to communicate our thoughts to another, and / or that we do not always want to d ‘interact with him.

Indeed, human conversation has never been perfect, and for good reason: the interlocutors are not perfect. Their linguistic, encyclopedic and communication skills and performances vary. And that’s totally normal. Because everyone has their own way of thinking, of expressing themselves and of transmitting to others the depth of their thoughts, or at least what they want to reveal.

Indeed, clarity and precision, for example, are not our strongest assets. And H.P. Grice may think and say that the communicative act is based on the principle of cooperation, to talk about this desire to understand each other, speakers are not always really cooperative.

So Grice conception is certainly idealized since misunderstandings are an integral part of our daily communication. Theese ‘trouble’ of language result from poor communication and / or an erroneous or abusive interpretation, an act that can be influenced by several factors: linguistic, psychological, cultural, social… Speakers do not always respect the rules or the principles that govern conversational acts, because they ignore them or perhaps also they do not want to comply with such procedures.

But, when we speak about misunderstanding, sometimes, we cannot help wondering whether it might not exist in speakers whose speeches are often focused on misunderstanding, a pleasure in playing with words and in obscuring their thoughts to cover them up and to prevent others from reaching them. Could misunderstanding be just a phenomenon inherent in human language, which is not perfect and whose sign is characterized by incompleteness? Or such ‘language disorders’, like the misunderstanding, would rather be an error, intended or not, of speech interpretation?

Keywords: communication, speech, misunderstanding