Assigning intended meaning.
Activating Schemata
Decoding auditory sounds
Assigning Literal Meaning
Retaining essential information or meanings.
Determining the function of the speech event.
Determining the demand for short- or long-term memory.
The hearer assigns an intended meaning to the utterance. The person on the bus intended to find out what time of day it was, even though the literal meaning didn’t directly convey that message. How often do misunderstandings stem from false assumptions that are made on the hearer's part about the intended meaning of the speaker? A key to human communication is the ability to match perceived meaning with intended meaning. This match-making, of course, can extend well beyond simple metaphorical and idiomatic language. It can apply to short and long stretches of discourse, and its breakdown can be caused by careless speech, inattention of the hearer, conceptual complexity, contextual miscues, psychological barriers, and a host of other performance variables.
The hearer processes what we'll call "raw speech" and holds an "image" of it in short-term memory. This image consists of the constituents (phrases, clauses, cohesive markers, intonation, and stress patterns) of a stream of speech.
The hearer assigns a literal meaning to the utterance. This process involves a set of semantic interpretations of the surface strings that the ear has perceived. In many instances, literal and intended meanings match. So, for example, if one of your students walks into your office while you are madly grading papers and says she has a question that she would appreciate your answer to, then says, "Do you have the time?" the literal meaning (Do you possess enough time now to answer me?) is appropriate. However, this process may take on a peripheral role in cases where literal meanings are irrelevant to the message, as in metaphorical or “idiomatic" language. If, for example, a stranger sitting beside you on a bus has been silent for a period of time and then says, “Do you have the time?," your appropriate response is nor yes or no but rather "It's quarter to nine," or whatever. Second language learners must, in such cases, learn to go "beneath” the surface of such language in order to interpret correctly.
The hearer deletes the form in which the message was originally received. The words, phrases, and sentences are quickly forgotten - pruned"- in 99 percent of speech acts. You have no need to retain this sort of cognitive “clutter". Instead, the important information, if any, is retained conceptually.
The hearer determines whether information should be retained in short-term or long-term memory. Short-term memory- a matter of a few seconds- is appropriate in contexts that call for a quick oral response from the hearer. Long-term memory is more common when, say, you are processing information in a lecture. There are, of course, many points in between.
The hearer recalls background information (or schemata) relevant to the particular context and subject matter. A lifetime of experiences and knowledge is used to perform cognitive associations in order to bring a plausible interpretation to the message.
The hearer determines the type of speech event being processed (for example, a conversation, a speech, a radio broadcast) and then appropriately "colors" the interpretation of the perceived message. By attending to the context and the content, for example, one determines whether the speaker wishes to persuade, to request to exchange pleasantries, to affirm, to deny, to inform, and so forth. Thus, the function of the message is inferred.
