Cultures, contexts, and interpretability1

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The paper begins with a discussion of the meaning of ‘interpretability’ and its uses in contemporary disciplines, including linguistics and the area of world Englishes. The term has been defined by Larry Smith and several other researchers in order to make explicit what is meant by ‘intelligibility’, ‘comprehensibility’, and ‘interpretability’ among varieties of English across the world. However, besides referring broadly to ‘context’, there has been little attempt to explicitly outline what elements of context play a role in interpretability. This paper is an initial attempt to define one set of contextual factors that plays a crucial role in interpretability – the set related to culture. Culture is defined in terms relevant to the purposes of the paper, and the cultural factors under focus are explicitly identified. Select examples from various Englishes are presented to show the relevance of such cultural factors for interpretability.

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