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Literal Meaning
François Recanati provides an original defense of "contextualism" in contribution to the current debate about the best definition of semantics and pragmatics. Is "What is said" determined by linguistic conventions, or is it an aspect of "speaker's meaning"? Do we need pragmatics to fix truth-conditions? What is "literal meaning"? To what extent is semantic composition a creative process? How pervasive is context-sensitivity? Recanati offers an informed survey of the spectrum of positions held by linguists and philosophers working at the semantics/pragmatics interface.
188 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2003
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About the author
François Recanati
24 books2 followersFrançois Recanati is a French analytic philosopher and research fellow at the College de France, and at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Many of his works focus on the philosophy of language and mind.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 11, 2025
On my way to becoming a Recanati completist!
This long overdue read clarified for me how Recanati’s anti-inferentialism about communication fits with his availability principle (according to which what is said is consciously accessible). I’m not sure the arguments for the compatibility convinced me entirely: FR’s discussion of Carston actually made me appreciate relevance theory more (and its own brand of anti-inferentialism—insofar as inference is only understood there in the subpersonal sense)!
The main argument for the pragmatic construal of what is said is that only on the basis of the contextually enriched what is said can the relevant implicatures be derived, so primary pragmatic processes can’t stop at saturation, because they can’t stop as soon as just any old propositional content is arrived at.
Lots of things to discuss, I don’t agree with everything, but it’s probably the best entry point in Recanati’s oeuvre.
This long overdue read clarified for me how Recanati’s anti-inferentialism about communication fits with his availability principle (according to which what is said is consciously accessible). I’m not sure the arguments for the compatibility convinced me entirely: FR’s discussion of Carston actually made me appreciate relevance theory more (and its own brand of anti-inferentialism—insofar as inference is only understood there in the subpersonal sense)!
The main argument for the pragmatic construal of what is said is that only on the basis of the contextually enriched what is said can the relevant implicatures be derived, so primary pragmatic processes can’t stop at saturation, because they can’t stop as soon as just any old propositional content is arrived at.
Lots of things to discuss, I don’t agree with everything, but it’s probably the best entry point in Recanati’s oeuvre.
Displaying 1 of 1 review