Beyond Communication With the Same: On Sign, Value and Understanding

This paper offers a reflection on the essential characteristics and conditions of communication, hence on what makes communication possible. Reflection on communication inevitably calls for a focus on the production of meaning and understanding, on the problem of interpretation. The primary vocation of communication is the other, therefore dialogic listening and responsiveness by the other for the other, beyond communication with the same, that is, beyond the conventions of official communication and the order of discourse. The paper is developed according to the following main topics: 1. Utterance, text, interpretation; 2. The apparent paradox of communication; 3. The “rustle” of communication: between implicit meaning and explicit meaning; 4. Sense, significance, ambiguity: reading together Welby and Bakhtin; 5. More characteristics of live discourse—silence, listening, responsive understanding.