The incorporation of social issues in software engineering is limited. Still, during the last 20 years the social element inherent in software development has been addressed in a number of publications that identiWed a lack of common concepts, models, and theories for discussing software development from this point of view. It has been suggested that we need to take interpretative and constructive views more seriously if we are to incorporate the social element in software engineering. Up till now we have lacked papers presenting ‘simple’ models explaining why. This article presents a model that helps us better to understand interpretation, interaction and reality construction from a natural language perspective. The concepts and categories following with the model provide a new frame of reference useful in software engineering research, teaching, and methods development. © 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.