Speaker Meaning and Linguistic Meaning
Edited by Indrek Reiland (University of Vienna)
About this topic
Summary | The linguistic meaning of an expression is what fully competent speakers have a grasp of. It's a standing, context-invariant property belonging to an expression-type that makes it possible to use it to perform linguistic acts, e. g. to say things. Linguistic meaning, derivative semantic properties (e. g. semantic content) and linguistic acts are the proper domain of semantics. The term 'speaker meaning' is used in at least two different senses. In the dominant Gricean sense talk of speaker meaning is talk of what the speaker intentionally communicates (e. g. 'S meant that p'). The speaker might say something and mean the same thing or say something, but mean something else. The latter sorts of cases include conversational implicatures. A similar distinction was drawn by Kripke between semantic reference and speaker reference. Speaker meaning and speaker reference belong to pragmatics. Note that it's a complete accident of English that the same word can be used to talk about a linguistic property and a speaker's act. This is not the case in most other languages. In German the contrast is between 'bedeutung' vs. 'meinen', and in many other languages to talk of speaker meaning you have to use locutions that translate as 'S had in mind' or 'S wanted to say'. There are also two other uses of 'speaker meaning'. It is sometimes used to talk about what an expression means in a speaker's idiolect (Kripkenstein used 'In the past, I meant plus with '+'' in this sense). On another use it is used to talk about what an expression means on an occasion of use (e. g. what is sometimes called utterance meaning). When Searle uses 'speaker meaning' he has this in mind. Davidson called this 'first meaning' instead. However,many question whether we need to postulate utterance meaning at all, whether there's any explanatory work for it to do. However, even if we do, we should avoid calling it speaker meaning. |
Key works | Grice's key works are Grice 1957 and Grice 1975 both collected in Grice 1989. Kripke's distinction is spelled out in Kripke 1977. For Kripkenstein see Kripke 1982. Searle's use can be seen in Searle 1986. Davidson's view is presented in Dummett 1986. For skepticism about utterance meaning see Bach 2005 and Neale 2005 both in Szabo 2004. Also, Unnsteinsson 2014. |
Introductions | An important overview article on Grice's work is Neale 1992. Here are a number of introductions to the semantics/pragmatics boundary: Recanati 1998, Korta & Perry 2008, Bach 2012. |
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Related categories
Siblings:
- Kripkenstein on Meaning (244)
- Meaning Holism (262)
- Normativity of Meaning and Content (272)
- Aspects of Meaning, Misc (157)
- Speech Acts (984 | 890)
- Semantics-Pragmatics Distinction (448)
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Editorial team
General Editors:
David Bourget (Western Ontario) David Chalmers (ANU, NYU) Area Editors: David Bourget Gwen Bradford Berit Brogaard Margaret Cameron David Chalmers James Chase Rafael De Clercq Ezio Di Nucci Barry Hallen Hans Halvorson Jonathan Ichikawa Michelle Kosch Øystein Linnebo JeeLoo Liu Paul Livingston Brandon Look Manolo Martínez Matthew McGrath Michiru Nagatsu Susana Nuccetelli Giuseppe Primiero Jack Alan Reynolds Darrell P. Rowbottom Aleksandra Samonek Constantine Sandis Howard Sankey Jonathan Schaffer Thomas Senor Robin Smith Daniel Star Jussi Suikkanen Lynne Tirrell Aness Kim Webster Other editors Contact us Learn more about PhilPapers |