This is the text of The Lindley Lecture for 1984, given by Alasdair Maclntyre, a Scottish philosopher.

With mention of Ogden and Richards' The Meaning of Meaning, and drawing on Mailinowski, for an opening example, Dewey argues for the importance of the relationship of interpretation and meaning, to context and and situation of usage or utterance. In this article, Dewey expounds, among other themes, on the the prospect of interpretation of a radically alien language and what this prospect tells us about linguistic meaning.

Reprinted in James The Will to Believe and Other Essays.