Do others understand what we say or write? Do we understand them? Theorists of language and interpretation claim to be more concerned with questions about "what" we understand and "how" we understand, rather than with the logically prior question "whether" we understand each other. An affirmative answer to the latter question is apparently taken for granted. However, in Mutual Misunderstanding , Talbot J. Taylor shows that the sceptical doubts about communicational understanding do in fact have a profoundly important, if as yet unacknowledged, function in the construction of theories of language and interpretation. Mutual Misundertanding thus presents a strikingly original analysis of the rhetorical patterns underlying Western linguistic thought, as exemplified in the works of John Locke, Jacques Derrida, Gottlob Frege, Jonathan Culler, Noam Chomsky, Ferdinand de Saussure, H. Paul Grice, Michael Dummet, Stanley Fish, Alfred Schutz, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Harold Garfinkel, and others. This analysis reveals how, by the combined effect of appeals to "commonsense" and anxieties about implications of relativism, scepticism has a determining role in the discursive development of a number of the intellectual disciplines making up the "human sciences" today, including critical theory, literary hermeneutics, philosophy of language and logic, communication theory, discourse and conversation analysis, pragmatics, stylistics, and linguistics. Consequently, this provocative study will be of value to readers from a wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds. " Mutual Misunderstanding juxtaposes and critiques eight central theories of language within an utterly new and enlightening framework—and manages to retain a highly lucid and readable format at the same time."—Michael Macovski, Fordham University ""Mutual Misunderstanding" juxtaposes and critiques eight central theories of language within an utterly new and enlightening framework--and manages to retain a highly lucid and readable format at the same time."--Michael Macovski, Fordham University Mutual Misunderstanding Scepticism and the Theorizing of Language and Interpretation By Talbot J. Taylor Duke University Press Copyright © 1992 Duke University Press All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8223-1249-9 Contents Preface, To Remedy the Abuse of Words, One: On addressing understanding, TWO: On how we ought to understand, Communicational Codes, Three: On how we naturally understand, Four: On what understanding must be, Five: On knowing what we understand, Communicational Reasoning, Six: On reaching an understanding, Seven: On understanding what to do, Communicational Practice, Eight: On believing we understand, Nine: On acting like we understand, Ten: On doing "understanding", Denouement, Eleven: On whether (we believe) we understand each other, References, CHAPTER 1 On addressing understanding People know what they do; they frequently know why they do what they do; but what they don't know is what what they do does. (Foucault, quoted in Dreyfus and Rabinow 1982:187) It's only by thinking even more crazily than philosophers do that you can solve their problems. (Wittgenstein 1980:75) Do others understand what we say or write? Do we understand them? These are questions not often addressed in language theory. Those professionals who work in language theory—literary theorists, linguists, philosophers of language, communication theorists, semioticians, theorists of rhetoric, discourse analysts, etc.—are more interested in the problem of specifying what it is to understand and how we understand than in asking whether we understand. Apparently, the fact that communicators ordinarily understand each other is a pre-theoretical given, the sine qua non of academic discourse on language, meaning, and interpretation. Consequently, asking whether we understand our fellow communicators is typically treated as the sort of non-serious question that only a radical sceptic would even consider raising. After all, if we cannot in fact understand what others say or write and if they cannot understand us, it seems natural to conclude that each of us is little more than a psychological island: that is, we are isolated solip-sists who hear only the echo of our own voices, all the while believing and acting under the tragicomic illusion that we are hearing and being heard by others. With such a conclusion as the only apparent alternative, it is not surprising that language theory has consigned the discussion of sceptical doubts about communicational understanding to the realm of non-serious discourse. It is not my intention to argue for or against the seriousness of communicational scepticism. Rather, I intend to challenge the implication of the view just discussed: that is, that communicational scepticism has little or no influence in the intellectual discourse that constitutes modern Western thought on language. I will attempt to brin