If someone insults me and I become angry, his impertinence will be the aspect of his behavior that fits the formal object of anger: I only become angry once I construe the person's remark as a slight; the specific nature of my emotion's formal object is a function of my appraisal of the situation.
Forcing Ahmadinejad out of office in the middle of his term, after he had been "forced" into office in 2009, would have once again been construed by the public as another episode in the Supreme Leaders' string of political errors or bad judgements.
Moreover, the long-arm jurisdictional rules of Mississippi are so loosely construed that once a case is filed by one state resident, a lawyer can find dozens or even hundreds or thousands of other people with no ties to the state but suffering similar injuries.
The answer depends once again on how the question is construed: the word "meaning" is an equivocal term that can itself mean many different things.
Their employers and co-workers appear oblivious to their ethnicity; only once does anyone make what could be construed as a bigoted remark — a farmer in Oklahoma tells Jiichan, "I never seen a Chinese wheatie before".
Not once does he say anything that could be construed as ironic.
In all the years I've been seeing exhibitions at Tate's galleries, I have never once encountered anything that could conceivably have been construed as an advertisement for this or any other corporation, or for capital itself.
"Sorry, women," Glen says, at one point, abstractly addressing all of them at once, the better to avoid something that could be construed as a real apology.
During an address in the Rose Garden on Wednesday, in which he said he would not seek the presidency, Mr. Biden never once uttered Mrs. Clinton's name, and said nothing that could be construed as positive about her.
Mr. Hilman says the law conflicts with students' right to vote once they turn 21, noting that casting a vote might reasonably be construed as support for a political party.
