We need to talk about Hearer's Meaning!

Abstract

Mainstream theories of meaning in communication have traditionally centered the speaker's communicative intention. The centrality of Speaker's Meaning has, however, also been subjected to a great deal of criticism. We argue that it is time to take much more seriously the notion of Hearer's Meaning as distinct from Speaker's Meaning, even where the latter is conceived of as interactionally negotiated. Our principal contention is that, in terms of real-world effects, synchronically but also diachronically, Hearer's Meaning is, in fact, criterial. We propose a model of Hearer's Meaning as derived from seven sources – H's framing(s) of (different parts of) the speech event; H's assumptions about the conventional meanings of words and phrases; the sequential placement of the utterance; H's perception of S's identities; H's social relationship with S; H's social relationships with third parties; and finally, H's assumptions regarding S's intentions (if any) – and exemplify its application with the help of an extended Twitter thread. The contribution of each of these seven sources to Hearer's meaning is not necessarily fixed at the start of a given interactional episode and may vary according to the context of utterance. Moreover, the assessment of each of the sources may not be the same for all participants. As a result, meanings derived by different interactants need not be (near-)identical for them to judge a communicative exchange as having been successful. In other words, multiple parallel meanings are possible.

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