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It is often claimed that, in at least some areas of language use, the relation between form and content is such that any attempt at reformulation or paraphrase amounts to a distortion of the significance of the original wording. In this article, I set out to vindicate an undemanding yet nontrivial conception of paraphrase. According to the rhetorical relations account of textual cohesion proposed, the meaning specifications required by a collection of sentences in order to constitute a text pave the way for a kind of reformulation which is in solidarity with the possibility of paraphrase. I substantiate my approach with prosaic and poetic examples from Woolf and Dickinson, respectively.

In this paper I question the lying/misleading distinction from three different angles.I argue, first, that if speakers are responsible for what they explicitly say only andhearers for what they infer that speakers implicitly convey, it is practically impossibleto enforce speaker responsibility. An implication of this view is that the lying/misleading distinction is untenable. Other attempts at questioning the distinctionhave been countered by empirical evidence of the robustness of the distinction.However, there is also contrasting empirical evidence that people do think that it ispossible to lie by implicit means. I argue, second, that empirical evidence is irrelevantto the question which ought to be at issue, namely whether there are goodreasons to make the distinction. Third, I argue that to the extent that the notion ofmisleading is in the service of inducing false beliefs by the statement of truths, thedistinction does not seem to be morally well-founded. In short, I sketch an argumentto the effect that there are no conceptual, empirical or moral reasons for makingthe lying/misleading distinction.

In this paper I argue, from the consideration of what I hope is the complete variety of a hearer's approaches to a speaker's utterance, that (1) the speaker's intention does not settle the meaning of her utterance and (2) the hearer does not take a genuine interest in the speaker's actual intention. The reason why the speaker's intention does not settle utterance meaning is simply that no utterance meaning determination, as presupposed by intentionalists and anti-intentionalists alike, takes place. Moreover, in the regular course of interpretation the hearer does not care about the speaker's actual intention, but only about what the speaker presents as her intention: the hearer's goal is to come up with an interpretation which the speaker will accept rather than an interpretation which corresponds to the speaker's intention. In cases of accountability, suspicion and lying, the speaker's actual intention is irrelevant; it is at most the speaker's hypothetical intention which is at stake.

In the debate on demonstrative reference it is taken for granted that there is such a thing as the semantic instance of determinacy for demonstratives. I argue that the interpretive interaction between the speaker and the hearer suggests that the notion of objective semantic reference in the case of demonstratives is dispensable. Either the speaker and the hearer do not have recourse to any such notion or, at least, there are no reasons for them to have recourse to any such notion. Looking at reactions and interactions does not of course settle the issue whether there is objective demonstrative reference. But it strongly suggests that the issue rather be dismissed.