When I read the first sentence of the passage, I am so happy because of the word “matter”. It reminds me that during the time of translating Chinese into English, we usually describe something that is easy to be done or to be seen as “thing”. But the phrase “a single matter of” is so native and interpreted equally to Chinese. Then, when I intend to understand the further meaning of the title through analyzing the example in the second sentence, “knowledge of English” trapped me. What’s the “English knowledge”? Does it mean that “a certain politician” is viewed as “Margaret”, which is knowledge of English culture? Just as “apple” stands for “someone’s most loved person”? After I read the title again, I was quietly sure my opinion in that the main idea the author is expressing is “utterance” which is clearly explained by the ending of passage that an “utterance” here is a term used by linguists to refer to an uninterrupted chain of speech delivered under a given context. It can be as short as a one-word response of as long as a sermon and can be written or spoken.

In the last sentence of the first paragraph, three words make it difficult for understanding the sentence meaning. “Mere” means “only, little”; but added the “more than”, how to expound it?

From the second paragraph, the author showed three main questions that demonstrate the gap between sentence meaning and utterance interpretation through explaining the examples. But in the first question, “alone” appears twice. What’s the meaning of “alone” in the “our knowledge of English alone”? I looked it up in the dictionary; there are many explanations such as “without other people”, “only”. I can’t sure which one is the best to fit the sentence meaning, but my guess is “only”. And what stopped me in the paragraph eight is the syntactic relations that “the first interpretation to occur to most English readers would be that...” After I analyzed carefully I suddenly find it is too easy got it only if you can divide the structure of sentence. “The first interpretation” is subject and “to occur to most English readers” just is complimentary of the subject and “be” is the verb in this sentence.

When I did the first eight paragraphs, I can’t help thinking the Chinese culture which famous for its modesty or implicit in the communication. We are used to talking something indirectly and as if there are many possible meanings. I don’t understand how it’s born and developed, but obviously it is similar with the parts of English culture such as their rigorous or in collects. Of course, as to this example, it is clear that the author attempt to exploit the vague of the advertisement.