We've all experienced a disconnect during discourse. Sometimes, we are misunderstood(that's not what we meant). Other times, we misunderstand others(that's not what they meant). We've also all experienced a successful connection during discourse. Sometimes, we are understood(that's what we meant). At other times, we understand others(that's what they meant). Clearly there's a difference between being understood and being misunderstood.

We're understood when an audience correctly attributes meaning to our language use and/or behaviour. We're misunderstood when an audience incorrectly attributes(misattributes) meaning to our language use and/or behaviour. Since both cases include an audience attributing meaning to our language use, whether correctly or incorrectly, we must know how the attribution of meaning itself works in order to know what counts as doing so correctly(understood) or incorrectly(misunderstood). There's some nuance here, particularly when it comes to correctly interpreting unconventional language use, such as malapropisms and their kin.

The attribution of meaning is an event consisting of what I like to call it's basic elemental constituents. It's neither physical, nor mental. It's neither material, nor immaterial. Rather, it's something that happens, and it consists of both, physical and non-physical elements, some of which could be literally worlds and/or centuries apart. The attribution of meaning does not occupy space in any meaningful sense of the phrase, although some of it's content can. It does not have a clearly delineated or definable spatiotemporal location, although again, some of it's content can. Rather, the attribution of meaning is instantiated by it's effects/affects, and being understood and/or being misunderstood are precisely such consequences. So, there's a need here to set out the aforementioned basic elemental constituents.

All attribution of meaning(that involving language notwithstanding) consists - at bare minimum - of a creature capable of drawing correlations between different things. Think Pavlov's dog, the sound of the bell, and food. The dog attributes meaning to the sound of the bell, by virtue of drawing correlations between it and eating. The sound of the bell becomes meaningful to the dog as a result. That's a simple but adequate enough explanation of a simple occurrence of the attribution of meaning in some of the earliest actual stages.

When it comes to our being understood and/or misunderstood by an audience(and vice-versa), our language use(Pavlov's bell) becomes an integral element within the attribution of meaning on both, the part of the speaker and the part of audience, for the audience draws correlations between our language(the sound of the bell) and other things, just like we do.

The problems of misunderstanding/misinterpreting arise when the audience draws correlations between our language use and something else that we do not. That difference amounts to misunderstanding by virtue of the misattribution of meaning to our language use. They've misattributed meaning to our language use by virtue correlating it to something different than us. Whereas, when the audience draws the same(or similar enough) correlations between our language use and something else, we're understood. The 'something else' part of the correlation drawn by us is food, whereas for our audience it is only when we're understood that they too correlate the sound of the bell with food. Hence, as a result of drawing correlations between the same things as us, they've correctly attributed meaning to our language use. However, if the audience draws correlations between the bell and something other than food, then they've misattributed meaning to the sound of the bell(our language use), and misunderstood us as a result.