Interpretation
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Interpretation is a term used in informal education settings to describe any communication process designed to reveal meanings and relationships of cultural and natural heritage through first hand involvement with an object, artifact, landscape or site. This is primarily known as heritage interpretation.
An interpretation can be the part of a presentation or portrayal of information altered in order to conform to a specific set of symbols. This may be a spoken, written, pictorial, mathematical, sculptural, cinematic, geometric or any other form of language. Complex meanings may be evoked where the reader consciously or unconsciously cross-references the text by situating it within broader frames of experience and knowledge.
There are three things that allow interpretation to occur, and these are all interlinked and interdependable: the writer, the text and the reader. Through the act of interpretation the reader is the one creating meaning; the meaning of the text intended by the writer is potentially overlooked or ignored. The reader produces meaning by participating in a complex of socially defined and enforced practices. Interpretation is an active process of producing values and meanings, a process that always occurs within specific cultural and political contexts, directly linked to the world in which the reader lives.
The purpose of interpretation would normally be to increase the possibility of understanding, but sometimes, as in propaganda or brainwashing, the purpose may be to evade understanding and increase confusion. [1] [Apr 2007]
