Abstract of "What Kind of Speech Act is Interpretation?"
(1981)
- After distinguishing the speech act of interpretation from
the mental act of interpretation and from interpretation in an
artistic medium, this article considers the place of interpreting
in the speech-act taxonomies proposed by J. L. Austin and John
Searle, and compares interpreting to describing, explaining,
diagnosing, and related speech acts. Several different kinds of
textual interpretation are distinguished, chiefly in terms of
their truth-values. The activity of the ancient interpres
(broker, mediator) is proposed as a model for literary
interpretation.
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Michael Hancher
Department of English, University of Minnesota
URL: http://umn.edu/home/mh/abswksai.html
Comments to: mh@umn.edu
Created February 1995
Last revised 17 September 1996