I’ve been seeing the use of the phrase “functinally illiterate”, and it got me thinking that I don’t think there is such a thing when it’s speech instead of the written word. There are plenty of instances I can think of where I or someone I knew was simply not capable of or didn’t want to try to understand something that was said. Is there something that means not bring able or refusing to comprehend speech when that person is fluent in the language being spoken?
“not able” and “refusing” are pretty different qualifiers
To me, “not able to understand” is a capacity gap where the listener doesn’t have the capacity or context to grasp the meaning as delivered
“Refusing” to me sounds like aggravated ignorance either by choice or by defense mechanism
That is fair, however sometimes people use functionally illiterate in both conditions, I was trying to match that as closely as possible.
I like these terms, but nothing makes it specific to the spoken word. These terms could theoretically be used instead of functionally illiterate.