Abstract

Language is the repository of meaning which emerges from human experience. From this ground of experience, presuppositions affecting how a person understands him- or herself, others, and the world around him, arise. For Ricoeur, the function of language must be examined to situate better the human person as having the capacity to say something. All meaning is realized and communicated in language as discourse. Whether written or oral, discourse always offers an opening of a new perspective to anyone who can read, listen, and communicate. For this reason, language is through and through hermeneutical because it is the medium through which sense and meaning are passed on, either through the event of speaking or of the written text.