MEANING CONSTRUCTION

Current theory rejects the idea that readers and listeners are passive and represents them as actively engaged in a task of meaning construction. An ‘effort after meaning’ impels them to impose an interpretation even on an obscure text, and to keep updating it as new information comes in. They do not ‘receive’ the message encoded by a speaker/writer; they have to reconstruct it from the material of the utterance.

Central to meaning construction is the distinction between: (a) the words on the page or in the ear; (b) the propositional information that a text contains (loosely, its literal meaning); and (c) the enriched and selective interpretation which a reader or listener takes away. In processing a text, a comprehender performs a number of operations. At sentence level, they:

extract propositional information;

make any necessary inferences;

enrich the interpretation by applying world knowledge;

integrate the new information into their mental representation of the text so far;

 monitor their comprehension in case of misunderstanding.

At discourse level, they also have to:

recognise the hierarchical structure of the text;

recognise patterns of logic which link the parts of the text;

determine which parts of the text are important to the speaker/ writer or relevant to their own purposes.

A number of accounts of discourse comprehension attempt to describe the way in which text information is built into an overall meaning representation:

The early Kintsch and Van Dijk models (Van Dijk and Kintsch, 1983) feature higher-level units of meaning, termed macro-propositions, which are achieved through the reader making judgements about which items of information are central to the text. Meaning construction operates in three stages. There is a surface level which takes the form of the actual words used in the text. There is a text-base level at which propositional information is established on a sentence-by-sentence basis. Finally, there is a situational level which brings in external knowledge; it is at this stage that propositional information is transformed into macro propositions. Kintsch et al. attempted to support this theory experimentally by constructing texts based upon sets of propositions, which they categorised at several levels according to how critical they were deemed to be to the development of the text. They recorded that the more important propositions were more likely to be recalled.

The two-step Construction-Integration model (Kintsch, 1988) updates the earlier theories, relying more heavily on ‘bottom-up’ information from the text. At the construction stage, meanings are activated in the form of a loose network of associations. At the integration stage, a boost is given to information which is contextually relevant, so that a coherent text base can be created. Textual cues lead readers to give added weight to some sections: they might, for example, pay more heed to the opening sentence of a paragraph.

The theory of mental models (Johnson-Laird, 1983) also postulates two stages: one at which propositional information is available and one at which an enriched interpretation is achieved through the listener/ reader making inferences and bringing world knowledge to bear. A mental model is the representation of a text which they hold at any given moment. Whenever the latest proposition appears to make no reference to entities in the current model, the listener/reader initiates a new model. Similarly, two models are combined when the proposition seems to refer to entities that feature in both. Throughout, propositions are tested to ensure that their truth conforms to the truth of the model as a whole.

The Memory Focus Model (Sanford and Garrod, 1981) has developed from work on anaphor resolution. At any given moment, a reader has a model of a text, in which there is an explicit focus upon the elements of the text that are currently foregrounded and an implicit focus upon other information being carried forward. The processing of a text is selective and can be shallow or deep. In some circumstances, top-down notions of the purpose of the text may override information at local level. Hence the Moses illusion: asked the anomalous question How many animals of each kind did Moses put in the Ark?, many subjects answer ‘Two’.

The Structure Building Framework (Gernsbacher, 1990) also provides a model of how readers build a coherent representation of a text. Here, the first stage of comprehension consists of laying a foundation, which is why reading times are longer for the first word of a sentence or the first sentence of a paragraph. The reader maps incoming information on to a current information substructure if it coheres with what is there. If it does not, the reader employs a shifting process which involves creating a new information substructure. Less-skilled comprehenders are said to shift too often because they do not make the appropriate connections. As a result, they build meaning representations at a very local level and fail to construct more global ones.

See also: Focus, Mental model, Proposition, Schema theory, Story grammar

Further reading: Garnham (1985: 152–82); Gernsbacher and Foertsch (1999); Kintsch (1994: 729–36); Stevenson (1993: Chap. 5).

اخر الاخبار

اخبار العتبة العباسية المقدسة

المجمع العلمي للقرآن الكريم يصدر الكتاب الثاني من سلسلة يخشى

قسم الشعائر يكرّم أصحاب المواكب المشاركة في إحياء ذكرى شهادة السيدة الزهراء (عليها السلام)

جامعة العميد تستقبل طلبة المراحل الأولى المقبولين ضمن كلياتها للعام الدراسي الجديد

سماحة السيد الصافي يكرّم طلبة حفظ القرآن الكريم المتفوّقين ويؤكّد دور التدبّر في الهداية والتكامل

المزيد

الآخبار الصحية

طبيب يكشف تأثير برودة الشتاء على النوم

دون أن تعلم.. 10 عادات يومية تسرع شيخوخة جسمك

تقرير: النيكوتين خطر على القلب مهما كانت الطريقة

أيهما أفضل لصحتك.. زبدة الفول السوداني أم النوتيلا؟

المزيد

الآخبار التكنلوجية

السعودية تدشن أكبر نظام لتخزين الكهرباء بالبطاريات في العالم !

بأمر تنفيذي.. ترامب يؤكد هدف عودة الأميركيين إلى القمر في عام 2028

بعيدا عن البشر.. "قتال جوي في الفضاء" بين أميركا والصين

كشف مذهل في قاع "برمودا" !

المزيد

مواضيع ذات صلة

Problems with the dictionary view

The dictionary view

Dictionaries versus encyclopaedias

The encyclopaedic view of meaning

Embodiment and conceptual structure summary

Schematic systems

Semantic structure

Conceptual structure

Image schemas and abstract thought

Properties of image schemas

What is an image schema?

Image schemas