Understanding a text as a process of creating text-reactions with new knowledge and meaning

The study is devoted to a comprehensive analysis of text comprehension as a level-based process, in which the identification of larger /deeper meanings becomes possible after isolating a set of smaller/deeper levels of comprehension. The relevance of the article is determined by the importance of understanding itself as an evolutionary process in human life. It is revealed that the generation of any speech–making product is conditioned by the author’s intention - the need to influence the verbal / non-verbal behavior of the perceiver of the text or his idea of the subject of the description, that is, it presupposes a reaction, the so-called feedback (expected / unexpected, instant / delayed, verbal / non-verbal, physical / mental/emotional, etc.), as a result of text perception. Moreover, the reaction of the interlocutor / reader to the same text can be completely different. This is primarily due to the degree of adequacy of the understanding of the text, as well as the agreement / disagreement of the perceiver of the text with the position of the author. It has been established that the creation of any text is determined not only by the intention of the addressee, but also correlates with the receptive and interpretative abilities of the addressee. Ignoring the cognitive abilities of the text perceiver leads to a lack of intersection of the author’s and reader’s code, resulting in misunderstanding. It is proved that the understanding of the text is associated with the transformation of the author’s meaning (the exception is the generalized meaning, which is in some sense objective), due to the subjective picture of the world perceiving the text, that is, the addressee perceives the volume and depth of information for which he is prepared and which he can assimilate. It is established that each subsequent reading of the same text is characterized by an increase in volume and depth of understanding. The results of our experiment allowed us to draw a conclusion about this. The exteriorization of the subjective perception of the text of I. A. Bunin’s poem “The Word” by the recipients made it possible to assess the completeness, quality, accuracy, and adequacy of understanding based on the created reaction texts with a new indirect content.