Elementary, My Dear Colleague! Educating Our Students' Guesses

Abstract

lt is by now an axiom that translation and interpretation are forms of mediated interlingual communication, whereby both analysis of the originai and production of the target te x t are govemed by hypertextual (in tbe skopostheorie sense of tbe term) and macrotextual analyses based upon tbe relevant features of tbe situation. A crucial component of sucb analyses is tbe structure of explicatures and implicatures and, more relevantly, the way that, within the limits of bis rhetorical competence, a writer/speaker chooses his explicitations as a function of wbat be assumes is a) not necessary to make explicit, b) not advisable to make explicit - and vice versa. The author is counting on bis addressees to put the two they read/hear and tbe two they know/assume/can infer together in order to apprehend his intended sense (see Viaggio 1996).