What is Your Real Meaning?

When two Chinese people meet, A says to B: "Have you had your lunch?"

1. What does A want to do by saying this? You may choose from the following list:
a) A genuinely wants to know if B has eaten the meal. It is a question for information.
b) A wants to invite B to a meal. This is a polite beginning of an invitation.
c) A wants to say 'Hello'. It is an informal greeting.

2. If you were B, how would you respond to A?

回答完请看下面的解析：

From our Chinese tradition, we interpret this sentence as an informal greeting (c), rather than a genuine question to know whether B had the meal or not. Our response, accordingly, can be "Yes, and you?", even in spite of the fact that we haven't had the meal yet. Therefore, the question form in this case has nothing to do with a search for real information. Instead, it has the same function as "Hello". It implies that you want to be friendly with the person you meet and want to show that you care about his/her welfare.

From this example and many other examples in our real life, we can see that we don't always mean exactly what we say. Once I overheard a little boy at the zoo saying to his father, "Dad, over there, there is another big hippopotamus!" His father answered, "Oh, yes, isn't it huge." Shortly afterwards, the boy repeated his sentence again, and this time, instead of looking at the animal, he looked at this father. Eventually, the father understood, and carrying the boy on his shoulders, they moved together to the other side of the pool to see the hippopotamus over there. What the little boy meant was that he wanted to be carried over to see the other hippopotamus. But, he wished to express this desire to his father in an indirect way in order not to appear to be demanding and selfish. From this example, we can see that from a very early age, we acquire the ability to understand and use one of the features of human communication, that is expressing a desire in an indirect way without stating it directly. So, the literal meaning of a sentence may not match the real intention of the speaker.

Therefore, for our students, knowing how to make correct sentences is only one part of what we mean by knowing a language, which is of course an essential part, but it has very little value on its own; it has to be supplemented by a knowledge of the appropriateness and the functional value of the language when it is used as a normal means of communication.

Let's look at further examples of these two concepts: the functional value of language and its appropriateness.

选自：北外网络课堂

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