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does with it. This definition and interpretation at the same time make reference to in-being, to preoccupation with the thing under consideration. And with such an interpretation, this thing only now actually enters the environing world as something present and understandable, even though only provisionally, for it is truly understood only when one has entered into the standing [Bewandtnis] which the environmental thing has. The interpretation appresents the what-for of a thing and so brings out the reference of 'in-order-to.' It brings to prominence 'as what' the encountered thing can be taken, how it is to be understood. The primary form of all interpretation as the cultivation of understanding is the consideration [Ansprechen] of something in terms of its 'as what,' considering something as something. This amounts to an appresenting in talking over what is thus appresented in the primary and guiding consideration. This functional form of interpretation, 'considering something as something,' thereby does not need to be expressed in the linguistic form of a proposition. The grammatical form of the proposition is always but a form of expression of the primary and authentic proposition, namely, this consideration of something as something. In thus bringing out the what-for and the for-sake-of-which of something, the incomprehensibility is removed, the meaning of meaningfulness is made explicit, it is put into words. As a meaning thus brought out, it can now itself get its word. And only now is there the possibility of distinguishing the highlighted meaning as a verbal meaning from the subject matter meant—a process complicated in its structure and varying in turn in various possibilities of interpretation, the account of which belongs to logic.
But there is something essential for us in what has just been said: There is verbal expression—language—only insofar as there is considering, and such a consideration of something as something is possible only insofar as there is interpreting; interpretation in turn is only insofar as there is understanding, and understanding is only insofar as Dasein has the structure-of-being of discoveredness, which means that Dasein itself is defined as being-in-the-world. This continuity which founds the several phenomena—considering, interpreting, understanding, being discovered, in-being, Dasein—at the same time serves to define language, or gives the horizon from which the essence of language can first and foremost be seen and defined. Language is nothing but a distinctive possibility of the very being of Dasein, where Dasein is to be taken in the previously explicated structure.
In what follows, we shall first consider the discourse of everydayness. Language is the possibility of the being of Dasein such that language