204 CHAPTER 6
Construing Meaning
The following hypothetical scenario illustrates a more difficult problem for
formalist grammars: A couple (Fritz and Macarena) has put their home up for sale;
they meet with a potential buyer (Rita) and give her a tour. Rita comments on how
lovely the home is and asks the purchase price. Fritz and Macarena provide a fig-
ure, and Rita looks around slowly and then makes the following statement:
- The house needs new paint.
What, exactly, does this statement mean? In formalist accounts, the meaning
is inherent in the statement as a matter of fact. That is, the statement maps a cer-
tain real-world condition onto a linguistic form that is determined by the lexi-
con and the grammar. However, as Lee (2001), and others (Williams, 1993,
2003a) have pointed out, meaning in human communication rarely consists of
this sort of mapping. Instead, it involves a complex array of contextual or situa-
tional factors that lead those participating in the language event to construe
statements in different ways. On this account, in our scenario, Rita’s utterance
of sentence 6 does not have the same meaning for her as it does for Fritz and
Macarena. For her, the sentence may signify the prospect of money saved in the
purchase, whereas for Fritz and Macarena it may signify money lost if they sell
to Rita. We find a further illustration of this phenomenon if we conclude our
scenario with Rita purchasing the house. Sentences 7 and 8 convey this fact.
Both map the same real-world condition into very similar grammatical
structures—yet they mean very different things:
- Fritz and Macarena sold their house to Rita for a good price.
- Rita bought Fritz and Macarena’s house for a good price.
The range of factors that can influence how we construe the meaning of
statements is very large. Lee (2001) argued that all language use exists in
frames that consist of background knowledge and context and that language
is understood in relation to these frames. On this account, “if I approach the
boundary between land and sea from the land, I refer to it as ‘the coast,’
whereas if I approach it from the sea, I call it ‘the shore’” (Lee, p.10). Lee sug-
gested that frames can help explain the misunderstandings that often occur in
cross-cultural communication, which “have nothing to do with the meaning
of linguistic forms in the narrow sense.... In a frame-oriented approach, ...
knowledge differences based on an individual’s life experiences (including
growing up in a particular culture) can be built into the model” (p. 11). Thus,
we understand why it is so difficult to get jokes in another language—they are