Speaker Meaning and Linguistic Meaning

This is a short response piece to Jeremy Schwartz's "Saying 'Thank You' and Meaning It", published in Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 2020, 98, pp. 718-731. -/- Schwartz argues against the received view that 'Thank You! is for expressing gratitude, claiming instead that it is for expressing one's judgment that gratitude is appropriate or fitting. I argue against the judgment view while defending the received one. -/- I mainly consider the objection that the judgment view is implausible since it makes ‘Thank (...) you!’ semantically indistinguishable from the declarative sentence ‘Gratitude is appropriate to you’ and show that Schwartz’s attempt to sidestep it relies on misunderstanding Kaplan's view of what it is for a sentence to be an expressive vs. a declarative. (shrink)

Traditional descriptivism and Kripkean causalism are standardly interpreted as rival theories on a single topic. I argue that there is no such shared topic, i.e. that there is no question that they can be interpreted as giving rival answers to. The only way to make sense of the commitment to epistemic transparency that characterizes traditional descriptivism is to interpret Russell and Frege as proposing rival accounts of how to characterize a subject’s beliefs about what names refer to. My argument relies (...) on a development of the distinction between speaker’s reference and semantic reference. (shrink)

I set up a puzzling contrast using two well-known cases: Evans’ (1973) case of Madagascar and Kripke’s (1977) Leaf Raking case. Despite their apparent similarity, only the former has traditionally been thought to involve reference change. However, it’s not clear why this is so. I survey a number of influential and contemporary accounts that fail to explain the contrast in a satisfactory way. The challenge posed by cases of reference change therefore endures. Interestingly, the challenge endures for proponents of Kripke’s (...) well-known causal picture of reference fixing, as well as for proponents of Evans’ accounts which were attempts to improve upon that picture. (shrink)

This paper discusses the scope and limits of the Principle of Charity (PC) in dialectic and argumentation from a Davidsonian perspective. On the one hand, some scholars have proposed that PC is insufficient for explaining the complexities of dialogues and then have suggested extending PC into a Dialectical Principle of Charity (DPC). On the other hand, some scholars have proposed that PC should not be considered necessary because it leads to the “paradox of charity” in critical discussion. They have then (...) proposed limiting PC use in argumentation. Our paper addresses the problems stated by Pruś and Sikora (2023) about the rigidness of the Principle, which assumes the interpreter’s view is true and the reduction of the possibility for rational confrontation of beliefs, and the paradox of charity in argumentation stated by Lewiński (2012) according to which charity is incapable helping us decide between opposite positions, as those we find in critical dialogues. We propose that PC is both a necessary condition for argumentation and a dynamic method for the dialectical process. Although we find both roles in Davidson’s works on interpretation (Sect. 2), we want to make explicit their significant contributions to dialectic and argumentation, which are not explicit in his works and are little recognized and much polemicized among theorists of these fields. On the positive side, our proposal aims to nourish Pruś’ and Sikora’s Dialectical Principle of Charity (DPC) by adding a mechanism to track changes at sentential, propositional, and subpropositional levels (Sect. 3) and to clarify how, although PC is not sufficient for the analyst to choose between opposite theses in critical discussion, it is a necessary condition for meaningful disagreement, so it is neither optional nor a mere strategic device among others we can use in argumentation (Sect. 4). (shrink)

‘What are you talking about?’ This is, in a sense, the animating question of philosophy of language. Or at least it was at the start of the 20th century. Times change, and interest in this question has perhaps faded. Still, it remains. And now we have a new attempt to answer it, in the form of Elmar Unnsteinnson's Talking About.

A great deal of attention has been lavished on Kripke's Smith-Jones case. Yet there is another case in the vicinity which is perhaps even more fascinating, and which is noteworthy for somehow having eluded philosophical attention to this point: the Jones-Jones case. Here, we introduce the case and work out its ramifications for the metasemantics of names.

This paper critically examines Unnsteinsson’s Collapse Argument, which contends that “Easy” views of saying something or expressing a proposition collapse into the Gricean view (Unnsteinsson, Talking About: An Intentionalist Theory of Reference, Ch. 4). Easy views maintain that saying/expressing is simply a matter of uttering a sentence with its meaning, without requiring Gricean communicative intentions. Unnsteinsson argues that Easy views must appeal to such intentions to explain what makes saying/expression intentional and rational and that this collapses them into the Gricean (...) view. I show that this argument fails for several reasons. First, the intentions that the Easy views must posit to explain what makes saying/expressing rational are not equivalent to the Gricean communicative intentions. Second, the constitutive question of what makes an act into a saying/expressing and the rationalizing question of what makes it rational are distinct. Thus, even if Easy theorists would have to appeal to something like Gricean communicative intentions in answering the latter question, this wouldn’t cause their answer to the former question to collapse into the Gricean answer. (shrink)

The central pillar of Austin’s theory of speech acts is the three-way distinction between locutionary acts like saying, illocutionary acts like asserting, and perlocutionary acts like persuading (Austin 1962: VIII-IX). While the latter distinction has been widely accepted, the former distinction has been frequently rejected due to Searle’s objections, who argued that since Austin’s locutionary acts are supposed to be forceful in the sense contrasting with neutral expression of a content and all force is by Austin’s own definition illocutionary, the (...) notion of a locutionary act collapses into that of an illocutionary act (Searle 1968). In this paper, I provide an interpretation of Austin’s distinction between locutionary and illocutionary acts and defend it against Searle’s objections. I argue that Searle’s main objection relies on mistakenly running together two notions of ‘force’: the Fregean notion of representational force as presentation-as-true and the Austinian notion of illocutionary force as the social-communicative significance of the speech act. Once we distinguish these we can see that although Searle is correct that Austin’s locutionary acts are forceful in the former sense, he’s mistaken in thinking that such force is illocutionary. Given this, his objection that locutionary acts collapse into illocutionary acts misses its mark. (shrink)

What is the proper role of intention in the theory of linguistic meaning and language use rather than speaker meaning and communication? According to Public Language theorists like Dummett, Kaplan, and Evans, semantic intentions are necessary to activate the pre-existing meanings of expression-types. According to Individualists like Searle and Davidson, meaning-intentions are necessary to imbue expression-tokens with some semantic significance. The present paper argues against the latter view while simultaneously clarifying and developing the former one. Individualists, I show, face a (...) choice between an implausible version of Humpty Dumpty-ism or explanatory redundancy. The Public Language view of semantic intentions faces some challenges of their own. With proper explication, however, I show how they can be overcome. (shrink)

I argue that Kripke’s construal of the distinction between speaker’s reference and semantic reference, in ‘Speaker’s reference and semantic reference’ (Kripke in Midwest Stud Philos 2:255–276, 1977), in conjunction with an intuitive view of the nature of conventions, implies a theory of semantic reference that is distinct from his causal theory. On this theory, semantic reference is conventionalized speaker’s reference. The argument concerning Kripke has two general implications. First, any theory that features a notion of speaker’s reference will have great (...) difficulty in avoiding the view that semantic reference is conventionalized speaker’s reference. Second, theories that deny that there is a viable notion of speaker’s reference, and thereby deny that semantic reference is conventionalized speaker’s reference, will face an uphill battle in meeting certain general constraints originating in the theory of conventions. (shrink)

Cases of identity confusion raise a challenge for convention-based metasemantics. Lewis’s (1983) influential account of convention as it applies to language use fails to distinguish, among two candidate languages, the one used by the population in question. The problem extends to Grice’s (1989) influential account of sentence meaning.

Name Painting is an activity that has the potential to bring people together to test their opinions and tastes in a phenomenological fashion. This research aim to reveal how such an activity can lead to results that can be expressed through poetry. The arts-based research aims to reflect some of the challenges of engaging with the public for participation in a cultural activity, that of Name Painting, but also aims to show some fruitful ways to display the results in the (...) form of poetry. A.I. is also consulted to provide further contrast with the participant and artist-researcher's approaches to name painting. The thematic and content analysis of the study reveals some of the patterns associated with the results in a mixed methods approach. (shrink)

The essays that comprise this dissertation bring to light several foundational challenges confronting a number of influential meta-semantic theories—those that aim to explain how the contents of utterances and/or beliefs are determined. In addressing these challenges, I argue that two strategies offer a promising path forward: (1) examining the beliefs formed upon uttering or hearing a variety of complex sentences, and (2) identifying the contents that maximize knowledge across nearby possibilities. Together, these approaches help illuminate how our mental states and (...) utterances come to represent the world. (shrink)

According to Maite Ezcurdia, demonstratives are directly referential expressions with complex linguistic meanings. This distinction between levels of meaning resulting from her analysis of how different types and uses of demonstratives anaphorically interact leads her to conclude that simple demonstratives are non-compositionally complex, while complex demonstratives are so, partially, due to composition. In this article, I both extend her methodology and discuss her conclusions. I argue that the distinction between demonstratives results from how different types of contexts of use work (...) to select the referent, not from semantic composition. As Maite taught us, complexity isn’t always compositional. (shrink)

The Gricean program is an intention-based theory of meaning that seeks to reduce semantic properties to mental states, such as intentions and beliefs. It aims to explain the notion of linguistic meaning in terms of speaker’s meaning without relying on semantic notions, and to account for the notion of speaker’s meaning in terms of speaker’s communicative intentions without relying on semantic notions. This paper argues that the Gricean program fails to adequately define the notion of speaker’s meaning and presents three (...) reasons to support this claim: First, existing definitions of speaker’s meaning, proposed according to the Gricean program, struggle to eliminate certain types of counterexamples. Second, these counterexamples can be eliminated by incorporating a semantic notion into a definition of speaker’s meaning. Third, there is a plausible alternative definition of speaker’s meaning, which avoids these counterexamples and involves the semantic notion, i.e., the notion of what is (literally) said that is understood independently of the speaker’s communicative intentions. (shrink)

Jorgensen Bolinger (2020) argues that contested slurs present a puzzle to semantic accounts of derogatory words, and support socio-pragmatic or uptake-centric accounts. Her argument relies on the assumption that contested slurs are genuinely derogatory and that disagreeing parties are not linguistically incompetent. This paper argues that cross-linguistic and cross-dialectic disagreements involving contested slurs are consistent with semantic theories of slurs. The argument is based on three types of case: first, intra-linguistic cross-dialectic disagreements, cross-linguistic disagreements, and, finally, intra-linguistic non-derogatory words that (...) can be used to derogate and in-group uses of derogatory words. The cases put into question the assumption that contested slurs are derogatory tout court and show that in relevant intra-linguistic cases of contestation, stubborn speakers need not be linguistically incompetent. (shrink)

n the middle of the 20th century, it was a common Wittgenstein-inspired idea in philosophy that languages are analogous to games and for a linguistic expression to have a meaning in a language is for it to be governed by a rule of use. However, due to the influence of David Lewis’s work it is now standard to understand meaningfulness in terms of conventional regularities in use instead (Lewis 1969, 1975). In this paper I will present a simplified Lewis-inspired Conventions (...) view which embodies the basic idea and argue that it is inferior to the older Rules view. Every theory of meaningfulness in a language must yield a plausible story of what it is to speak the language, that is, of what it is to use an expression with its meaning. Those who have adopted something like the Conventions view standardly take use with meaning to consist in trying to use the expression in the conventionally regular way (Lewis 1969, Davis 2003, Loar 1981). I argue that this proposal fails since use with meaning is compatible with intentional misuses. In contrast, on the Rules view we can take use with meaning to be analogous to making a move in the game and to consist in using it while the rule is in force for one which is compatible with intentionally breaking it. And nothing structurally analogous can be found on the Conventions view without inflating it into the Rules view, which completes the case against it. (shrink)

In this paper, I critically assess Mark Richard’s interesting and important development of the claim that linguistic meanings can be fruitfully analogized with biological species. I argue that linguistic meanings qua cluster of interpretative presuppositions need not and often do not display the population-level independence and reproductive isolation that is characteristic of the biological species concept. After developing these problems in some detail, I close with a discussion of their implications for the picture that Richard paints concerning the dangers of (...) conceptual engineering and the prospects for dynamic notions of semantic stability. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Green Light Ethics: A Theory of Permissive Consent and its Moral Metaphysics by Hallie LibertoJonathan Ichikawa (bio)Review of Hallie Liberto, Green Light Ethics: A Theory of Permissive Consent and its Moral Metaphysics (Oxford University Press, 2022)Hallie Liberto's Green Light Ethics offers a framework for conceptualizing permissive consent. The book is a philosopher's work of philosophy. Although it touches on non-ideal social realities, especially sexism, it is most centrally (...) a contribution to a quite abstract literature in normative ethics, following in the tradition of scholars like David Owens, Heidi Hurd, Alan Wertheimer, and Tom Dougherty—it may have a few too many Φs and abstractions to be accessible to and comfortable for many people outside the analytic philosophical tradition. The central approach to permission and consent is general—not specific to sexual consent—although some discussions are specific to sex.I have always appreciated and learned from Liberto's work on this topic, and I was excited to read her new book. As I'd hoped, it exhibits fresh and interesting moral and philosophical instincts, and advances plausible and interesting ideas. I did feel, however, that it was sometimes more difficult than one might hope to identify exactly what those ideas are. At key points, I found myself wanting more precision or explanation. I am not the kind of philosopher who shuns abstraction—I value both the concrete/non-ideal and the theoretical/abstract. And I'm not afraid of all those Φs. But as I see it, the point of writing in that mode—the reason it can be worth the cost in accessibility and style—is the ability to express and examine complex ideas with a high degree of precision. As I was reading this book, I found that much of my own intellectual contribution centered around attempts to interpret Liberto's ideas and technicalities before I was in a good position to learn from them. This was a bit of a shame, because there are intriguing ideas in this book, well worthy of consideration. I'll give my own reconstruction of a few of them below, along with some critical engagement.1. domain authorityLiberto posits that there are certain domains over which people hold a special kind of moral authority, which she calls "domain authority" (38). Someone would wrong you if they acted in your domains outside of your normative control. For example, you have domain authority over sexual contact with your body; any actions by others within that domain must [End Page 429] be in accordance with your moral control, or they are violative. Liberto typically uses the following abbreviations to discuss domain authority: S is a person who may or may not be giving P permission to Φ, which is a potential action that P might perform. Φ here is always an action within D, a particular domain of S's moral authority. Since Φ is within D, Φ would wrong S if P Φ'd without S's appropriate authorization.In the case of sexual domain rights, D is S's bodily sexual domain; P would wrong S by performing some act Φ within that domain outside of S's authority. (Φ might be sexually penetrating S, for example.) The framework generalizes. D might be my home, and Φ could stand for potential actions within my home for which any S would need my permission: entering it, say, or drilling a hole in the wall. I'll follow Liberto's use for these abbreviations. Note that Φ will always refer to an act within S's domain D.One of the more distinctive contributions of Liberto's framework is her insistence that subjects retain their domain authority, even as they exercise it to permit action within their domains (42). When S consents to Φ, Liberto says, S does not waive any rights against Φ. If they did, Φ would no longer be part of S's domain of authority D. It is possible to waive rights in this way—this is what happens with property transfers. But Liberto argues that things are quite different for permissive consent (61). If I invite P into my home, or permit P to touch me sexually, they may do so without violating... (shrink)

In this chapter, I examine Max Deutsch’s dilemma for the implementation of newly engineered concepts. In the debate over this dilemma, the goal of conceptual engineering tends to be set either too high or too low. As a result, implementation tends to be seen as either very unlikely to succeed or too easily achievable. This chaper aims to offer a way out of this dilemma. I argue that the success conditions for implementation can be better understood if we distinguish between (...) different stages in the implementation process. Implementation is a complex process involving several stages, each of which can be evaluated as a success or a failure. I argue that even if an implementation does not reach the final stage in which a new concept is widely used in the society at large, it may not be a complete failure: conceptual engineers may not even aim for a new concept to be widely used in the society at large; or even if they do and a new concept only circulates in a smaller subgroup, this can still be a significant achievement. The upshot is that we should take more seriously the possibility that conceptual engineering can be implemented locally at the subgroup level. (shrink)

It doesn’t have (just) one, and this matters for how we ought to pursue a theory of meaning and communication.

‘Rule-following’ is a name for a cluster of phenomena where we seem both guided and “normatively” constrained by something general in performing particular actions. Understanding the phenomenon is important because of its connection to meaning, representation, and content. This article gives an overview of the philosophical discussion of rule-following with emphasis on Kripke’s skeptical paradox and recent work on possible solutions. Part I of this two-part contribution is devoted to the basic issues from Wittgenstein to Kripke. Part II will be (...) about recent answers to the skeptical paradox and Boghossian’s and Wright’s new puzzles. (shrink)

I argue that Kripke’s construal of the distinction between speaker’s reference and semantic reference, in ‘Speaker’s reference and semantic reference’ (Kripke in Midwest Stud Philos 2:255–276, 1977), in conjunction with an intuitive view of the nature of conventions, implies a theory of semantic reference that is distinct from his causal theory. On this theory, semantic reference is conventionalized speaker’s reference. The argument concerning Kripke has two general implications. First, any theory that features a notion of speaker’s reference will have great (...) difficulty in avoiding the view that semantic reference is conventionalized speaker’s reference. Second, theories that deny that there is a viable notion of speaker’s reference, and thereby deny that semantic reference is conventionalized speaker’s reference, will face an uphill battle in meeting certain general constraints originating in the theory of conventions. (shrink)

I argue that what speakers mean or express can be determined by their implicit or unconscious states, rather than explicit or conscious states. Further, on this basis, I show that the sincerity conditions for utterances can also be fixed by implicit states. This is a surprising result which goes against common assumptions about speech acts and sincerity. Roughly, I argue that the result is implied by two plausible and independent theories of the metaphysics of speaker meaning and, further, that this (...) is a robust basis on which to make an inference, with a fair degree of confidence, about the relationship between expression and implicit attitudes. (shrink)

Stipulation gives us a degree of control over meaning. By stipulating how I will use a term I am able to determine the meaning it will receive on future occasions of use. My stipulation will affect the truth conditional content of my future utterances. But the mechanisms of stipulation are mysterious. As Cappelen (2018) argues, meaning is typically determined in an inscrutable way by a myriad of external factors beyond our control. How does stipulation override these factors? And the powers (...) of stipulation are limited. Firstly, the power of stipulation is typically short-lived. Sec-ondly, some stipulations simply don’t get off the ground. What explains the limits of stipulation? I consider two related approaches to stipulation and argue that they are unable to capture stipulation’s metasemantic effects. I then provide an explanation of the metasemantic effects of stipulation: Stipulation determines meaning by determining the word use it is fitting to hold the speaker to. This account is able to capture the mechanisms and limits of stipulation, whilst also explaining why we should care about stip-ulative success. I close by briefly drawing out some lessons for conceptual engineering. -/- . (shrink)

The linguistic meaning of a word in a language is what fully competent speakers of the language have a grasp of merely in virtue of their semantic competence. The meanings of words sometimes change over time. ‘Meat’ used to mean ‘solid food’, but now means ‘animal flesh eaten as food’. This type of meaning change comes with change of topic, what we are talking about. Many people interested in conceptual engineering have claimed that there is also meaning change where topic (...) is retained. For example, they claim that the meanings of ‘fish’ and ‘pasta’ have undergone such change, and that the meaning of ‘marriage’ would change this way after gay marriages become legal and widely accepted. In this paper, I relate two sets of relatively independent literatures: mainstream philosophy of language and conceptual engineering to argue that on a plausible and widely accepted Minimalist view of meaning that is part and parcel of anti‐descriptivism, none of the above sorts of cases involve meaning change with topic retention. I do this by showing how to distinguish minimalism about meaning from the related theses of externalism and anti‐individualism about intension and how to separate meaning from intension in a way that allows meaning and topic to remain the same despite changes in intension. The larger lesson is that much like we should not disregard the boundary between the narrowly meaning‐related (‘semantics’) and the more broadly communication‐related (‘pragmatics’), and we should not disregard the boundary between the former and the more broadly thought‐related, conceptual or cognitive (‘cognition’). (shrink)

A speaker can express the same thought, true under the same conditions, while using different expressions and grammatical constructions. According to Frege, these are differences in colourings. Colourings may convey additional contents; in that, they resemble Gricean conventional implicatures. Sander (2019) argues that Gricean implicatures do not subsume the category of colourings, as some colourings do not communicate their content. I show that this argument relies on a notion of communication focused on the speaker's intentions. But a notion of communicative (...) intentions where a speaker is responsible for the intentions her audience ascribes her possible. Under this notion, since so-called non-communicative colourings trigger specific inferences, a speaker who uses them communicates these inferences. Therefore, I vindicate the communicative role of colourings with content. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is twofold. First, it aims to contribute to the debate about the normativity of meaning not by means of providing and defending new arguments, but by analysing and reflecting on some of the presuppositions and seemingly irresolvable dialectical points of disagreement. Second, it seeks to achieve the first aim by critically engaging with some of the objections raised against semantic normativity by anti-normativists like Kathrin Glüer, Anandi Hattiangadi and Åsa Wikforss as well as discussing some (...) of the ideas defended by normativists like Hans-Johann Glock, Severin Schroeder and Daniel Whiting. The upshot of the discussion is meant to provide a clearer representation of some of the arguments and concepts that guide the debate, though the proposed analysis, if correct, should also add some support for the normativist’s case. (shrink)

In everyday talk about language, we distinguish between what someone said and what they implied, or otherwise conveyed. This distinction has been carried over into theorising about language and communication, resulting in much debate about how the notion of what is said should be defined. Against the underlying assumption of these disputes, Nothing is Said argues that it is a mistake to import the notion of saying into our models of basic linguistic communication. -/- Rather than belonging to our basic (...) linguistic competence, the notion of saying is a reflective one resulting from a higher-order metacommunicative competence that is relatively late-developing. This competence allows us to reflect simultaneously on the form and content of an utterance, and hence characterise it as an act of saying. The study shows how this notion of saying can be accounted for without assuming that identifying what is said is a necessary step in basic utterance interpretation. -/- The idea that linguistic interpretation relies on identifying what is said is deeply ingrained. Mark Jary considers the consequences for semantic and pragmatic theory of dropping this assumption, focusing on lexical pragmatics, scalar implicature, assertion, lying, and other topics that have received significant attention in the recent literature. The claims made are supported by reference to empirical data from experimental psychology. (shrink)

According to what is perhaps the dominant picture of reference, what a referential term refers to in a context is determined by what the speaker intends for her audience to identify as the referent. I argue that this sort of broadly Gricean view entails, counterintuitively, that it is impossible to knowingly use referential terms in ways that one expects or intends to be misunderstood. Then I sketch an alternative which can better account for such opaque uses of language, or what (...) I call “sneaky reference.” I close by reflecting on the ramifications of these arguments for the theory of meaning more broadly. (shrink)

Evans (1973)’s Madagascar case and other cases like it have long been taken to represent a serious challenge for the Causal Theory of Names. The present essay answers this challenge on behalf of the causal theorist. The key is to treat acts of uttering names as events. Like other events, utterances of names sometimes turn out to have features which only become clear in retrospect.

Combining new insights from cognitive science and speech act theory, Unnsteinsson develops a compelling theory of singular reference which avoids well-known puzzles. The theory, Edenic intentionalism, is grounded in a mechanistic perspective on explanation in cognitive science and a new Gricean account of speaker meaning and speaker reference.

Recent literature has presented a serious challenge for propositional accounts of content. It has been argued that certain bits of natural language discourse, in particular, modal claims, pose a fundamental challenge for propositional accounts, as they fail to express propositional content even relative to a context. The puzzling linguistic behavior of modal discourse suggests that context simply cannot determine propositional content for such claims. This appears to call for a re-thinking of the interaction between context and content, and their role (...) in communication. Indeed, various non-propositionalist accounts that have been proposed to capture this puzzling behavior call for such re-thinking. Such accounts have received various implementations, for instance, in various expressivist and dynamic update semantics. These accounts deny that modals express ordinary propositional content, and they also deliver a non-classical logic. This chapter introduces the challenge, and the main features of non-propositional accounts that have been proposed as a solution. (shrink)

Non-propositionalism has additionally been fueled by the fact that modals and conditionals seem to give raise to failure of classical patterns of inference, for instance, _modus ponens_ and _modus tollens._ Since non-propositionalist accounts typically invalidate some of these patterns of inference, the apparent counterexamples have been taken as further data in support of such treatments. This chapter argues that this is a mistaken reaction to the apparent counterexamples. The seeming violations of classical patterns of inference yet again result from a (...) faulty assumption of the extra-linguistic account of context-sensitivity resolution, and a failure to account for the effects of discourse conventions on the interpretation of modal discourse. The chapter’s account of modality, which treats them as prominence-sensitive expressions whose interpretation is determined by discourse conventions, predicts and explains the apparent counterexamples, while nevertheless preserving classical logic. (shrink)

This chapter further develops the idea that discourse conventions govern the dynamics of prominence, and determine the state of the conversational record, fixing the interpretation of an occurrence of a prominence-sensitive expression, such as a demonstrative pronoun. The chapter identifies a range of linguistic mechanisms—discourse conventions—that affect prominence as a matter of their grammatical contribution reflected in the logical form of a discourse. Specifically, it is argued that mechanisms of discourse coherence—the inferential connections between individual utterances that signal how they (...) are organized into a coherent discourse—affect the contextual prominence ranking of candidate interpretations for demonstrative pronouns as a matter of their grammatically encoded contribution. The meaning of a demonstrative is then determined linguistically through and through. While demonstratives are prominence-sensitive, they are not sensitive to non-linguistic features of utterance situation. (shrink)

This chapter provides the key elements of the account of context and context-sensitivity. Like the shifty, dynamic account of context in Chapter 3, this account models context as a running record of candidate interpretations for context-sensitive items, for exmaple, demonstrative pronouns. However, by contrast, the chapter argues that context organizes candidate interpretations by prominence. Further, it argues that prominence is fully linguistically determined: the context is updated exclusively by linguistic rules, through effects triggered by elements in the logical form of (...) a discourse. These elements are richer than standardly thought, including, for example, contributions of demonstrative gestures. A demonstrative, then, receives a simple unambiguous meaning: as a matter of its meaning, it simply selects the most prominent interpretation that satisfies its lexically encoded constraints. This account is argued to be empirically more adequate, and avoids the theoretical challenges facing the alternatives discussed in earlier chapters. (shrink)

Natural languages are riddled with context-sensitivity. One and the same string of words can express many different meanings on occasion of use, and yet we understand one another effortlessly, on the fly. How do we do so? What fixes the meaning of context-sensitive expressions, and how are we able to recover the meaning so effortlessly? -/- This book offers a novel response: we can do so because we draw on a broad array of subtle linguistic conventions that determine the interpretation (...) of context-sensitive items. Contrary to the dominant tradition, which maintains that the meaning of context-sensitive language is underspecified by grammar and that interpretation relies on non-linguistic cues and speakers' intentions, this book argues that meaning is determined entirely by discourse conventions, rules of language that have largely been missed and the effects of which have been mistaken for extra-linguistic effects of an utterance situation on meaning. The linguistic account of context developed here sheds new light on the nature of linguistic content and the interaction between content and context. At the same time, it provides a novel model of context that should constrain and help evaluate debates across many subfields of philosophy where appeal to context has been common, often leading to surprising conclusions such as epistemology, ethics, value theory, metaphysics, metaethics, and logic. (shrink)

This chapter develops a formal model of context-sensitivity of modal discourse. Much like demonstrative pronouns, modals are prominence-sensitive, selecting the most prominent candidate interpretation. The prominence ranking of candidate interpretations is recorded in the conversational record, and is maintained through the effects of discourse conventions represented in the logical form of a discourse. In this way arguments are individuated as structured discourses that underwrite a particular propositional pattern. It is shown that such account provably preserves classical logic. Further, this chapter (...) argues that its model offers a more satisfactory account of the individuation of argument patterns in natural language discourse then the competing alternatives. Any adequate account, it is here argued, will have to take into account not just the contribution of individual sentences, but also of discourse conventions. Indeed, the contribution of discourse conventions is crucial for determining the contribution of individual sentences in the first place. (shrink)

The observation that demonstrative expressions allow for both bound and referential readings, and can be bound across sentence boundaries, provides independent motivation for a shifty account of context. Dynamic semantics offers an elegant model of shiftiness, in treating the context as a running record of potential interpretive dependencies, and utterances as instructions to update and possibly change extant dependencies. Such an account advances over the static Kaplanean model insofar as it allows for the interpretation to be dynamically affected by the (...) linguistic elements in the preceding discourse. However, due to the way it represents linguistic dependencies, and due to its reliance on both linguistic and non-linguistic effects of context to determine interpretation, the account still makes demonstrative pronouns indefinitely ambiguous at the level of logical form, thus inheriting some of the theoretical problems of the static account. (shrink)

The chapter provides an introduction to the key themes of the book. It introduces the problem of context-sensitivity, and its theoretical significance. It then outlines the key elements of the account the book develops—the notion of context, of content, and of context-content interaction—situating them with respect to the dominant tradition in theorizing about context-sensitivity. The chapter, finally, outlines some of the philosophical ramifications of this account and of its criticism of the traditional model for the nature of context, content, and (...) their interaction. The book argues that the traditional model of context-sensitivity underlies the linguistic arguments for non-propositional accounts of content and non-classical semantics that have gained support in recent literature. But it is the traditional model that should be abandoned instead, and replaced with a more adequate linguistic model of context this book develops. (shrink)

An influential alternative account of context that likewise models context as a body of information that changes with an evolving discourse is Stalnakerian common ground model. On this model, however, the context is projected from a body of information mutually accepted by the interlocutors for the purposes of a conversation—a common ground. While the context constantly changes, these changes simply reflect the agents’ rational and cooperative response to manifest evidence. Might one attempt to assimilate the kinds of effects on prominence (...) simply to such rational responses to manifest evidence? Might we then do without the rich discourse structure posited in this chapter? It is argued here that this account would be empirically inadequate, failing to capture the special status linguistic conventions have when weighed against our overall evidence. (shrink)

This chapter introduces the standard account of context-sensitivity, focusing on true demonstratives, the model for most context-sensitive expressions. The account involves an idealization that utterances are interpreted in a single, unchanging context. But this is problematic: it has a consequence that demonstratives are either indefinitely lexically ambiguous, or indefinitely ambiguous at the level of logical form. The chapter argues this is theoretically problematic. Relaxing this idealization, we could let the context change between occurrences of demonstratives. A demonstrative could then have (...) an unambiguous meaning, selecting the prominent interpretation in the current context. However, if prominence is determined extra-linguistically, as the traditional model assumes, we would still lack a systematic account of context-change, facing much of the same problems. An alternative account is outlined, which the chapter argues avoids the problems: the context is shifty, but the mechanisms of context-change are linguistic, and so the content of demonstratives is fully linguistically determined. (shrink)

This chapter tackles the challenge of non-propositionalism. It argues that the source of the puzzle motivating non-propositionalism is the implicit assumption of the traditional, extra-linguistic account of context-sensitivity resolution. The problem is not in the idea that modal claims express truth-conditional content, but in the underlying assumption of how a context operates to determine this content. With a more nuanced understanding of the linguistic mechanisms driving context-sensitivity resolution, which captures the effects of discourse conventions, the apparent non-propositionality of modal discourse (...) turns out to be an illusion. The account delivers ordinary propositional content even for discourses that _prima facie_ evade propositionalist treatment. More importantly, a broader range of data suggests that such propositional content is required to properly account for the range of interpretations modal discourses allow. Thus, any adequate account has to take into account how discourse conventions identified in this chapter interact with the interpretation of modality. (shrink)

This chapter draws theoretical conclusions and outlines directions for future developments. It summarizes the key theoretical and philosophical upshots of the account developed in the book and discusses further extensions of this framework. It discusses how the account can be applied to model context-sensitivity of situated utterances, in a way that can offer insights into puzzles concerning disagreement in discourse and communication under ignorance, which have plagued standard accounts of context and content. Further, it outlines the way the account is (...) to be extended and applied to various types of context-sensitive items, including relational expressions, gradable adjectives, and domain restriction. (shrink)

On the traditional picture, sentences express content relative to context. This content then is, or determines, truth-conditional, propositional content, which is what we assert and believe, and which can guide our action. If I have a thought about the world, and I want to convey it to you, I should utter a sentence which, in this context, expresses that thought. You can then understand it, and come to believe it, and it might guide your action. But on the current proposal (...) the context is constantly changing, even mid-utterance, and utterances are interpreted as instructions to update the context. What of our simple account of thought, communication, and action? This chapter shows our dynamic account still delivers propositional content. While utterances are semantically assigned dynamic meaning, this meaning serves as an instruction to build ordinary propositional content. (shrink)

According to the “standard framing” of racial appeals in political speech, politicians generally rely on coded language to communicate racial messages. Yet recent years have demonstrated that politicians often express quite explicit forms of racism in mainstream political discourse. The standard framing can explain neither why these appeals work politically nor how they work semantically. This paper moves beyond the standard framing, focusing on the politics and semantics of one type of explicit appeal, candid racial communication. The linguistic vehicles of (...) CRC are neither true code words, nor slurs, but a conventionally defined class of “racialized terms.”. (shrink)

Hyperbole is traditionally understood as exaggeration. Instead, in this paper, we shall define it not just in terms of its form, but in terms of its effects and its purpose. Specifically, we characterize its form as a shift of magnitude along a scale of measurement. In terms of its effect, it uses this magnitude shift to make the target property more salient. The purpose of hyperbole is to express with colour and force that the target property is either greater or (...) lesser than expected or desired. This purpose is well suited to hyperbolic expression. This because hyperbole naturally draws a contrast between two points: how things are versus how they were expected to be. We also consider compound figures involving hyperbole. When it combines with other figures hyperbole operates by magnifying the specific effects of the figure it operates on. We shall see that sometimes hyperbole works as an input for irony; and at other times it builds on a metaphor to increase the effects of that metaphor. (shrink)

In this paper I show that we have strong empirical and theoretical reasons to treat the verbs we use in our semantic theorizing—particularly ‘refers to ’, ‘applies to ’, and ‘is true of ’—as intensional transitive verbs. Stating our semantic theories with intensional vocabulary allows us to partially reconcile two competing approaches to the nature and subject-matter of semantics: the Chomskian approach, on which semantics is non-relational, internalistic, and concerns the psychology of language users, and the Lewisian approach, on which (...) semantics is fully relational, specifies truth-conditions, and has metaphysical implications. ITVs have two readings: an intensional, de dicto reading, and a relational, de re reading. A semantic theory stated with the de dicto readings of our semantic verbs captures the core insights of the Chomskian approach to semantics, in part because it allows us to assign extremely fine-grained semantic values to expressions, even when those expressions are empty. On the other hand, the de re reading yields a theory that is fully relational, and issues in truth-conditions. The resulting theories are related—and compatible—in that they are expressed by two different readings of the very same semantic vocabulary, and plausibly, the distinction between these two readings is one of scope. (shrink)