People answer what they think a question means, not what is literally asked

Evidence

In the story “The Invisible Man”, where Father Brown, a propos the postman, makes this observation: “Have you ever noticed this that people never answer what you say? They answer what you mean or what they think you mean. Suppose one lady says to another, in a country house, ‘is anybody staying with you?’, the lady doesn’t answer ‘yes; the butler, the three footmen, the parlourmaid and so on’, though the parlourmaid may be in the room, or the butler behind her chair. She says ‘there is nobody staying with us’, meaning nobody of the sort you mean. But suppose a doctor enquiring into an epidemic asks ‘who is staying in the house?’ then the lady will remember the butler, the parlourmaid and the rest.” — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2542

Categorization

• XREF: Gramsci uses this to illustrate how context frames meaning — connects to the Islamophobia field’s point about how coded/questioning frames carry implicit assumptions about who counts as a relevant actor. — connects to: People treat only thought they need not understand as understandable — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 115; Interpreters should begin from the visitor’s question, not their own message — Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage, 381
• DEFINE: Illustrates that meaning is listener-relative and frame-dependent, a working principle behind Gramsci’s theory of language and common sense.