Content in Context

Seven Layers of Context

The first factor in determining if a person has lied, and in establishing a context for the lie, is meaning. When a person tells a lie, that person is making a statement that he does not believe to be true. However, in labeling someone a liar, it must first be determined whether or not there has been a misunderstanding, whether or not the person's meaning was grasped.

Meaning is more basic than truth in that if individuals do not know what a person means, they cannot determine if that person is telling the truth. The goal of establishing context is first [Page 212]and fundamentally to understand meaning. At the narrower levels of context, meaning is only partially grasped, and therefore there remain difficulties in correctly assigning truth or falsehood. Ambiguity remains at narrower levels of context, and is clarified as more context is given.

The narrowest sense of context is the most popular sense because it is at this level, or perhaps the next level, that most examinations of context end. This first level is the meaning of a given term. Because words, as conventional signs, can be used to communicate more than one concept, they can be ambiguous. This ambiguity can lead to misunderstanding or miscommunication. Specifying the exact concept expressed by a word sometimes requires the next level, which is to take note of the word's placement in a sentence. The grammatical structure of a sentence can sometimes help narrow down the meaning of a word. Nevertheless, neither of these levels rules out all ambiguity, and in the case of interpreting texts, there are many disputes about meaning, even when these two levels are carefully identified.

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