The object of this paper is to explore the problems posed by the analysis and description of the grammatical operators used to express different kinds of relations between elements mentioned, between the speaker and the contents expressed or between the speaker and his interlocutor. After a short discussion of the main difficulties that arise in current descriptions, a new, simpler model of analysis, developed within the context of metaoperational grammar (Henri Adamczewski), is proposed. Traditional descriptions tend to list the different possible interpretations as though meaning were directly encoded by the grammar of languages, and the work of grammarians just consisted in collecting surface observations. In the model adopted here, the interpretation given for each element in each single context is the result of the interaction between a number of factors, such as our knowledge of the extralinguistic world and of the context, obviously including the invariant kernel characterising each and every single element involved. Moreover, each element draws a large part of its meaning from a wide network of oppositional relationships with all the other elements of the system. It should therefore be studied in contrast with other elements, which is not always the case in the literature. Only by drawing an overall picture of the system (and not just fragmentary descriptions of isolated items) can the wide range of nuances that derive from the choice of one element or another be explained.