According to Lynch (), understanding has been treated as a methodological pre- requisite of any analysis of human action. Although understanding is fundamental in human communication and social activities, there is hardly any classification of understanding that is simple to comprehend and easy to utilise. Many researchers
18 Bakhtin (, p. , p. , p. ) has proposed the theory of unfinalisability of dialogue, suggesting
that dialogic expression is unfinalisable and always incomplete and productive of further chains of re-
sponses: meaning is never closed and always oriented toward the future. The unfinalisability of dialogue
cannot be overcome in thought or speech. Individual people cannot be finalised, completely understood, known, or labeled.
19 The practical purpose generally refers to sharing and making sense of the information presented; it can
be carrying on a conversation as primarily addressed by Garfinkel () or carrying on a specific com- munication and learning task as presented in Lindwall and Lymer () and also in this thesis.
20 The term partial understanding, which is used later in Study in this thesis, refers to a particular type
of understanding. It is as a different term separate from any philosophical concerns like the above-men- tioned. It has been used by a few researchers, for example, Allwood (), to refer to some type of un- derstanding problem or difficulty. Because of a similar conceptual purpose and meaning, the term par- tial understanding is also used in this thesis to refer to a type of insufficient understanding. Details of its definition and conceptualisation will be presented later.
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have concluded that analysing and categorising understanding has become a meth- odological procedure:
understanding might turn out to be what the prior speaker intended, or it may not; whichever is the case, that is something that gets displayed in the next turn in the sequence. We described this as the next-turn proof procedure, and it is the most basic tool used in CA to ensure that analyses explicate the orderly properties of talk as ori- ented to accomplishments of participants, rather than being based merely on the as- sumptions of the analyst. (Hutchby & Wooffitt, , p. )
Obviously, the term “turn” can be interpreted as either a specific turn management or turn-taking or a further followed-up communication context in general. It makes sense to adopt the latter, because understanding is not only or necessarily proved in the direct “next turn” in the conversation. For instance, it is not uncommon that it can take a while, for example, a few utterances or “turns” or even a lengthy talk, for the interlocutors to be able to understand the earlier communicated information or realise if anything has been misunderstood. Again, understanding should be studied from an interactional and contextualised perspective.
2.8.1 Challenge and opportunity: analytical interpretation
The operationalisation of understanding is, however, problematic, in that interpret- ing or annotating the manifestation of understanding in relation to the communica- tion context is usually indirect and somehow subjective to the annotators and re- searchers.
We must, in fact, to a great extent, rely on interpretation of the content and function of linguistic data in order to find cases which might throw light on the different states and processes of understanding. This, in turn, means that the sense in which we are using ‘operationalization’ and ‘observation’ are far removed from the ways in which these terms were used in the classical days of logical empiricism. (Allwood, , p. )
The most common approach is to use introspection or observation of the ways in which this abstract phenomenon of understanding is manifested through communi- cative behaviours, by using the evaluation criteria in terms of “relevance, coherence, conventional correctness, correspondence, consensus, degree of completeness, and degree of activation” (Allwood, , p. ). As a consequence, there is no escaping that a fairly high degree of interpretation is present in the empirical observational data (Allwood, ). This again stresses that it is a methodologically difficult issue
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to identify whether the information is understood or not. Thus, understanding is in- terpreted and studied from an analyst’s (analytical) perspective in this thesis, though tests of inter-rater reliability were carried out to make this less subjective.
Furthermore, it is even more difficult to distinguish the different levels of how much information is understood or not in the real communication practice. Witt- genstein (, p. ) proposed that we should try not to think of understanding as a ‘mental process’, for that is the expression that confuses us; instead, we should ask ourselves in what sort of case and circumstance we say ‘now I know how to go on’. In Clark and Schaefer’s Contributing to Discourse () and Clark and Wilkes- Gibbs’ collaborative process (), they have also pointed out that interlocutors try to establish a mutual belief for each utterance that the addressee has understood what the speaker meant well enough for current purposes (Clark & Schaefer, , p. ) for developing more common ground for further discourse. Clark, Schaefer, and Wilkes-Gibbs all claimed that during the discourse process, there were different lev- els and stages of understanding prior to an achieved and exhibited shared under- standing. However, Clark, Schaefer, and Wilkes-Gibbs did not make any effort to provide a concrete criterion of what the levels and stages of understanding are and how to identify and measure them. Firstly, this is probably because theoretically it is not easy to create such a measurement or scale; for instance, understanding can be understanding nothing, a little, some, plenty, a lot, most, all, and so on. As Verdonik () said, people can never understand even the same discourse in an identical way. It is hardly possible to make a universal detailed measurement. Secondly, it is probably because even in practice there is a scale of such complexity that it is still very difficult to use it to annotate the empirical data of interactions and achieve suf- ficiently high reliability. Nevertheless, a number of researchers have agreed that com- munication analysis in general has an important part to play in developing the un- derstanding of understanding in interaction, and that an empirical analysis of the process of understanding in interaction can make a significant contribution (cf. An- derson, ).
2.8.2 Influential ontological criteria for classifying understanding
Allwood () proposed ontological criteria for evaluating different types or de- grees of understanding, based on the notions similar to that of the degree of under- standing such as pseudo concept (Vygotsky, , pp. –), depth of intention (Naess, , pp. –), and depth of understanding (Allwood, , pp. –). Allwood’s (, pp. –) criteria include total lack of understanding, awareness31
derstanding, incorrect understanding, incomplete understanding, and misunderstand- ing. Obviously, from a semantic perspective, it is not easy to include partial under-
standing, insufficient understanding, and incomplete understanding at the same time within the same taxonomy. Also, as Allwood () admitted, it is not easy to separate incomplete understanding and insufficient understanding from partial un-
derstanding and it is difficult to separate incorrect understanding from misunder- standing (see p. ). In other words, it is not easy to set up a criterion to evaluate the
degrees of understanding on a micro level although it may be possible in a more gen- eral sense. Therefore, a simplified criterion for evaluating understanding, which in- cludes sufficient understanding, misunderstanding, non-understanding, and partial
understanding21, is used in the present thesis. These types of understandings will be
discussed below.
Weigand () suggested a categorisation of understanding that includes (har- monious) understanding, misunderstanding, and non-understanding as follows.
Figure 2.1. Dialogic action games: coming to an understanding (cited from Weigand, 1999,
p. 771).
Weigand’s (, pp. –) taxonomy of dialogic action games (see Figure .) explicitly treats the issue of understanding as a process of coming to an understanding rather than being a static understanding. In her theory, misunderstanding usually occurs without the interlocutors’ awareness, and it is normally corrected in the on-
21 The first three categories of understanding are used in Study , while all four categories of understand-
ing are used in Study .
Dialogic action games
coming to an understanding
by way of understanding only
misunderstanding
included
the standard case
non-understanding
included
harmony
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going discourse. In contrast to misunderstanding, the hearer identifies non-under- standing. The hearer signals the understanding problem and thus initiates the pro- cess of clarification, and the speaker makes the clarification. However, Weigand’s model may be restricted in some way. For instance, understanding (harmony pre-
established) is not necessarily to be pre-established; instead, it is usually dialogically achieved and developed. Misunderstanding may be or may not be corrected. The lat-
ter may actually lead to more misunderstandings in the further discourse. Non-un-
derstanding may be regarded as one stage of understanding, which might be devel-
oped into sufficient understanding but not necessarily always. Sufficient understand- ing, misunderstanding, and non-understanding are different types of understand- ings that are distinct from one another. Thus, do misunderstanding and non-under-
standing necessarily lead to coming to an understanding? If so, why and how are they
constituted by the process of coming to an understanding? Can misunderstanding al- ways or normally be corrected and then build up further understanding? Maybe some misunderstandings are fruitful and constructive, but how to distinguish them from those that are not? There may be some interaction existing between different types of understandings, but what is it? Perhaps, there are no absolute answers to these questions, due to the fact that the world is one of high complexity in the relationship between what is meant and what should be understood and also that there are always differences in cultural, linguistic, physical, and cognitive abilities from one interloc- utor to another. For example, when analysts want to investigate the cognitive and emotional mechanisms of human actions, they are always confronted by a risk of “misunderstanding” and “non-understanding”. As Weigand (, p. ) herself claimed, “we cannot start from a model of understanding an utterance as an ideal construction in which all points are fixed (as in Chomsky’s ideal grammar) or in which understanding is presupposed (as in a certain type of dialogue grammar)”, we have to view understanding from an interactional and contextualised perspective. Only the communication context and the relevant behaviours can exhibit what is understood or not and how it is understood. Preferably, all the aspects of communi- cative interactions (e.g., vocal-verbal, gestural, and prosodic features) are taken into account.
Based on Allwood’s () and Weigand’s () suggestions for classifying un- derstanding and Linell’s () suggestion of partially shared but sufficient under- standing as well as the fact that understanding is closely related to response and an-
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whether the information is understood sufficiently well and correctly22 in relation to
what is required to continue the conversation, sometimes including what can be in- ferred about the speaker’s intention and anticipation.
2.8.3 Categories of understanding
In this thesis, the following categories are used: sufficient understanding, misunder-
standing, and non-understanding, which are further described below.
Sufficient understanding
Sufficient understanding refers to the partially shared understanding that is sufficient
to serve the current practical purposes (Garfinkel, ; Bakhtin, ; Taylor, ; see Linell, , p. ) of information sharing, sense-making, and continuing com- munication, no matter how much is partially shared (see Linell, , p. , p. , and p. ). Also, the continuation of the interaction seems smooth23 without a man-
ifested speech act of questioning, although there can be doubts, arguments, and dis- agreements. Sufficient understanding is usually exhibited in the speech acts of de- claring and persuading. In addition, sufficient understanding in the present study is also defined as the information being understood in a way that is correct for current purposes in relation to what the relevant communicator intends and anticipates, no matter how much is correct. That is, sufficient understanding occurs when the inter- locutors are content with the understanding of one another and it is good enough to proceed further in the communication (see also Lindwall & Lymer, ). Theoreti- cally, there can be cases in which the participant’s understanding is more sophisti- cated or better than the speaker’s, they are also defined as sufficient understanding. Misunderstanding
Misunderstanding is defined as a form of insufficient understanding in this thesis.
Misunderstanding only occurs when the information is understood in an incorrect way or deviates from what is intended or anticipated (see similar use in Weigand,
22 Sufficient means that it is enough for the current practical purposes of understanding what has just
been going on and knowing how to proceed in the interaction and keep the interaction going on and on from moment to moment. Correct means that the information is understood in the same or a similar way as is intended and anticipated by the speaker, which is good enough for carrying out the current purposes of interaction.
23 In this thesis, the quality of a smooth interaction is entirely determined by the correlation of interests
between the interlocutors (see also Lu, ); the interlocutors perceive and accept or reject the commu- nicated information without putting forward questions or challenges.
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) although it can perhaps serve the current communication purposes of ex- changing information and carrying on the conversation. Misunderstanding may oc- cur as other insufficient understanding problems (see later) during the process of achieving sufficient understanding, although it does not always achieve sufficient un- derstanding. Instead, it can sometimes cause further misunderstandings and may not lead to anywhere close to sufficient understanding. Identification of misunderstand- ing is more contextual relevance dependent than other forms of understanding prob- lems (Lu, ); thus, it is more observable in task-oriented activities than in every- day conversations.
In a case of misunderstanding, the interlocutor may think he or she understands the communicated information, but in and through the ensuing utterances and be- haviours it is found that he or she in fact has not understood or not aligned with the other interlocutor’s intentions. That is, the interlocutor who misunderstands is not aware of it (see also Weigand, ). In fact, misunderstanding is often not detected
or even detectable24 by the participating interlocutors. The interlocutors just carry on
the interaction without being aware of the occurrence of misunderstanding through- out the entire interaction. This is a very interesting empirical phenomenon, yet it is not easy for the analyst to explore the deeper reasons and provide explanations as to how the interlocutors could carry on the interaction without becoming aware of such problems of misunderstanding.
Non-understanding
Non-understanding is another form of insufficient understanding. Based on
Weigand (), non-understanding in this thesis is identified when the information
24 Detect (Schegloff, , p. ; Bazzanella & Damiano, , p. ; Dascal, , p. ; Weigand,
, p. ; Verdonik, , p. ) and its synonyms notice (Schegloff, , p. ; Hirst, McRoy, Heeman, Edmonds, & Horton, , p. ; Bazzanella & Damiano, , p. ; Weigand, , p. ; Verdonik, , p. ; Mustajoki, , p. ), recognise (Schegloff, , p. ; Hirst et al., , p. ; Bazzanella & Damiano, , p. ; Dascal, , p. ; Dascal, , p. ; Weigand, , p. ; Verdonik, , p. ; Mustajoki, , p. ), identify (Bazzanella & Damiano, , p. ; Dascal, , p. ; Weigand, , p. ), and discover (Hartnack, , p. ; Dannerer, , p. ) have been widely used in the studies of language communication and understanding. The term de- tect is adopted and employed in this thesis, because from my point of view, compared to other terms, detect has more to do with active attention and participation of the interlocutors (see more reasoning in Posner, Snyder, & Davidson ()).
In this thesis, detect and its derivatives are used from a participant’s perspective because understanding problems are almost always analytically detectable and detected. What this thesis focuses on is describ- ing from a participant’s perspective what has actually happened between the participants during the in- teraction and investigating the participants’ relevant communicative behaviours from an analytical per- spective.
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is not understood at all for reasons such as lack of access to the information itself or some background knowledge of relevance. As the opposite of sufficient understand- ing, non-understanding cannot serve the current communication purposes of shar- ing and making sense of the information presented. Normally, non-understanding is manifested in the speech act of questioning, thus it is not difficult for the interloc- utors to detect and resolve non-understanding problems; sufficiently shared under- standing can usually be achieved eventually.