3 ms·
> In the end it doesn't matter which entity did the speaker of this term intend to refer to. The recipients have their own judgement due to the culture they rai
by ardy42 7y ago
> In the end it doesn't matter which entity did the speaker of this term intend to refer to. The recipients have their own judgement due to the culture they raised from.
But it does matter. Does an utterance mean what the speaker intended it to mean, or what the listener understood it to mean? The answer is both.
- theseadroid 7y agoSay I speak a foreign language with very important message to an audience that doesn't understand this language at all. Nobody in the audience understood the message after I spoke. Does what I said matter? I would consider the communication has failed completely. edit: But I guess WSJ wasn't speaking to Chinese. Anyway I can only see the misunderstanding deepens and deepens between U.S. and China. Language is one of the contributing factor. Western media is not incentivized to report truth but stories with most clicks. And it's hard for regular westerners to verify those stories without understanding Mandarin or talk to Chinese.