Utterance Interpretation without Utterance Meaning

• 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.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Filosofi, etik och religion -- Filosofi (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Philosophy, Ethics and Religion -- Philosophy (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Utterance Interpretation

Utterance meaning

What is Said

Intentionalism

Contextualism

subjective truth conditions

semantics

pragmatics

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)