Which is the role of intentions in utterance interpretation? I sketch an argument to the effect that the role of intentions is indirect; the interpreter’s assignment of meaning rather depends on considerations of what meaning is most reasonably assigned and her interest. This approach often results in the assignment of intended meaning, but might also result in the assignment of non intended meaning. I consider the three basic options offered to the interpreter when, in the course of the conversation, she is confronted with further evidence about the speaker’s intention.
Philosophers of language and theoretical linguists disagree about whether the meaning of an utterance is determined by the speaker’s more or less constrained communicative intention or by public features available to the hearer such as conventional linguistic meaning and diverse contextual cues. In this paper I question the common presupposition that there is such a thing as the correct interpretation of an utterance. I set out to show that, from the viewpoint of the three options at stake in the interpretive interaction between the speaker and the hearer, the notion of correct interpretation is dispensable. If the hearer takes an interest in the speaker’s intended meaning, as she most frequently does, she has no reason to be concerned with the actual meaning of the utterance. If the hearer wants to hold the speaker responsible for the normative consequences of the utterance, what is at issue is whether the hearer had the best reasons to take the utterance the way she did, i.e. the hearer opts for the most reasonable interpretation of the utterance, irrespective of the speaker’s intention and also of the objective meaning of the utterance. Finally, the hearer may opt for a merely imagined meaning of the utterance, which accounts for the remaining purposes a hearer can have with respect to an utterance, e.g. merriment. If there is no use for the notion of the correct interpretation of an utterance in interpretive practice, it seems that there are good reasons to dispense with this notion also in the theory about language and communication.
The function of anaphoric epithets, i.e. definite descriptions that appear in a referential chain, in texts is examined. First, we hope to establish that definite descriptions of this sort are referential expressions, they contribute a particular individual to the proposition and do not stipulate conditions to be satisfied by whoever happens to satisfy them. It is argued that it is the cohesion of the text that prescribes the referential function of anaphoric epithets. Second, a comparison between anaphoric epithets and Donnellan’s referential use is made. It will appear that anaphoric epithets are not exclusively referential devices, but the sense of the description enters into what is expressed by them. Anaphoric epithets are an instance of saturated linguistic expressions that nevertheless must be related to other expressions in order to be properly interpreted.
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.
Frege’s extension of his distinction between Sinn and Bedeutung to predicate terms is widely considered to beproblematic. Interpreters generally assume that the notion of Bedeutung comprises the name/bearer relation as aprototype and that the extension is justified only in so far as the relation of predicate terms to their alleged referents isanalogous to the relation of names to their bearers. However, interpreters have generally paid insufficient attentionto Frege’s own dealing with the issue. By examining the relevant passages in Frege’s writings, I show that thestandard ways of talking about Frege’s ascription of Bedeutung to predicates as optional, less evident than theascription of Sinn, and in need of justification are not in accord with Frege’s own conception of predicate reference.There is no textual evidence that the extension takes place for analogical reasons and, in particular, no evidencefor the claim that the name/bearer relation is used as a prototype. Frege is visibly not concerned with the relationbetween predicate terms and their referents, but applies the notion of Bedeutung for reasons of principle. There isindeed the invocation of an analogy, but if we consider the argument in which it occurs it appears that it does notplay the justificatory role interpreters attribute to it. In sum, Frege’s ascription of Bedeutung to predicates does notimply any mysterious or dubious referentiality of predicate terms.
This thesis is dedicated to two distinct but convergent issues: the possibility of paraphrase and an account of context sensitivity on the basis of textual cohesion (or coherence). The possibility of explaining contextual specifications of meaning as a side effect of establishing textual cohesion is explored through an investigation into the nature of texts. Taking off from existing theories of text structure, an ideal concept of cohesion is elaborated which accounts for textual connection by the interpreter’s assignment of rhetorical relations (or discourse relations). In addition to connecting the elements of a text together, rhetorical relations have implications for the content of terms and sentences composing a text. The contextual meaning of terms and sentences are thus explained by the fact that the terms and sentences are parts of a text. Enriching the domain of context sensitivity, special emphasis is placed on the implications of rhetorical relations for predicate terms. Through an analysis of authentic literary examples, a certain conception of predicate reference is vindicated which is labelled rhetorical adjustment. The approach contrasts with several contextualist theories in linguistics and philosophy of language which prefer to account for the generation of meaning transcending the linguistic meaning of terms and sentences as specified by syntax and lexicon by means of external parameters such as the speaker’s intentions and communicative aims. In this way the thesis is a contribution to the debate concerning the interface between semantics and pragmatics. Such a contextualism based on the notion of cohesion has implications for a certain conception of paraphrase. It is often emphasized that it is not possible to say the same thing in different words. It is argued that taking contextualism and cohesion into account justifies a conception of paraphrase according to which it is not opposed to, but contributes to the constitution of the original meaning. Such a paraphrase is undemanding in that it does not aim to capture all the aspects of the original wording, yet it is neither trivial, since it is unpredictable from a lexical point of view nor irrelevant, since it is a constitutive feature of the original expression in so far as it is part of a text.
Actual practice is underdetermined with respect to whether accusations of racism are based on the speaker’s attitude, communicative intention or the meaning of the utterance and whether in the latter case the racist meaning can be implicit or must be explicit. A common problem of these grounds for qualifying an utterance as racist is that they refer the question to the speaker’s own authority. The interactional model of utterance interpretation which forms the theoretical background of the present project permits us to elaborate a novel and robust conception of speaker responsibility. The speaker’s responsibility depends on the hearer’s most reasonable interpretation of the utterance in such a way that the speaker’s actual attitude or intention is irrelevant and also whether the meaning was explicitly or only implicitly conveyed.
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.
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 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.
It is commonly taken for granted that an important task of a theory of meaning is to tell what determines the meaning of an utterance. The two basic positions are intentionalism and anti-intentionalism, the former situating the instance of determinacy in the speaker S’s intention and the latter in features accessible to the hearer H. In this paper I argue that the interpretive practice of S and H lends support to neither intentionalism nor anti-intentionalism, but rather suggests that the notion of utterance meaning is dispensable. I outline what I take to be the three options at stake in utterance interpretation and show that none of them presupposes recourse to the objectively correct interpretation of the utterance.
The contribution of cohesion to determining what statement is madeby an utterance is considered in this paper. Two kinds of cohesion areexplored, the first grounded on a rather formal relationship, the secondof a more interactional character. The superiority of cohesion over thesituation or the speaker’s intention as a contextual criterion is claimed.
In most accounts of metaphor, similarities play a prominent role. When e.g. Romeo says ‘Juliet is the sun’, he is commonly taken to extend an invitation to the hearer to explore Juliet’s sun-like features; her being warm, bright, sustaining, etc. are thought to be highlighted by the metaphor. A problem about this kind of interpretation is that it is often difficult to find support for its content as well as its form in the actual context of the metaphor. I will put forward a different approach to metaphor according to which the speaker of a metaphorical ‘S is P’ sentence casts the subject as the predicate in her discursive and imaginative play. The function of the metaphor is not to suggest unstated similarities between the subject and the predicate, but essentially to permit the speaker to make further utterances about the subject in terms of the predicate, either in order to represent features and actions of the subject or to make the subject appear in a certain way.