Comprehensibility

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In communicative action, comprehensibility is a basic condition for something to be understood.

It is fulfilled in an act of speech when the message intended by the speaker was conveyed to a listener in such a form that he could understand it. This can only be made clear to the speaker by the reaction of the listener. Commonly, a speaker assumes an understanding of the terms used. If there is a lack of understanding, a listener asks the speaker for explanations.

Understandability depends on the one hand on the intentions of the speaker and on the other hand on the perceptions of the listener and also on the forms and means used to convey the message. Accordingly, the term intelligibility is not only used for spoken speech, but similarly for writing, graphics, paintings, gestures and other designs that are to be understood as expressions.

term

The term denoted by the term intelligibility is not defined uniformly. In a narrow sense, it is restricted to verbal utterances. In this sense, a message is understandable if its content can be understood by the listener or reader as the speaker or writer meant it. As the comprehensibility decreases, the message becomes incomplete and its content incorrectly or not at all.

In a broader sense, the term can also be used to refer to mental states and processes or to social situations and processes. An emotional expression or a social action can be understandable for participants or sympathizers, while, for example, uninvolved observers without empathy can lack understanding.

In this respect, comprehensibility plays an important role in understanding between people, groups, organizations and peoples. This does not only apply to processes of learning or the reproduction and transfer of knowledge. Comprehensibility is just as important for understanding personal or cultural motives as well as for social and political participation .

Spoken language

The intelligibility of spoken language depends on its acoustic and content intelligibility.

  • The acoustic intelligibility includes the volume, the vocal clarity of the pronunciation and the audible recognizability of the intonation .
  • Understanding the content includes the choice of words, the correct grammar, the sentence structure and more.

Written language

Text comprehensibility means the comprehensibility of the content of written messages. Text content, text structure (structure), text design (typography) and text presentation (stylistic design) are examined. Simplicity, structure and expressiveness are assessed.

Oddities

In the 1970s, classic German psychiatry knew "intelligibility" as a criterion for distinguishing between neurosis and psychosis . The psychosis was seen as an incomprehensible and incomprehensible mental disorder for outsiders. The neurosis, on the other hand, appeared "more understandable".

literature

Web links

Wiktionary: understandability  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Karl Jaspers : General Psychopathology . Springer, Berlin 9 1973, ISBN 3-540-03340-8 , 4th part: The conception of the totality of mental life; § 2 The basic distinctions in the overall area of ​​mental life, II. Essential differences d) Mental illnesses and mental illnesses (natural and schizophrenic mental life) Impensibility and incomprehensibility: p. 483 f.
  2. ↑ On the question of comprehensibility