O paradigma informacional da comunicação estipula que agentes usam a fala para transmitir informação não-redundante a outros agentes. Se olharmos para a fala auto-direcionada e, em particular, para a fala privada, no entanto, nos deparamos com um claro contraexemplo: nela, os papéis de falante e ouvinte coincidem no mesmo agente. Meu objetivo aqui será, então, somar-me aos esforços de buscar um paradigma alternativo que explique a fala privada, em seus vários usos, intrapessoais e intersubjetivos. Para isso, considero dois candidatos: o (...) paradigma disposicional e o deôntico, segundo os quais a fala serve, respectivamente, para gerar disposições e para negociar compromissos em ações coordenadas. Ao comparar os méritos de ambos, mostro que o segundo é preferível por conseguir explicar usos da fala privada com função fática mais facilmente que o primeiro. Tais usos evidenciam que a comunicação também pode voltar-se para aspectos de sua própria infraestrutura e da ação-entre-participantes. Lamentavelmente, eles vêm sendo negligenciados na literatura filosófica, embora pareçam ser peça-chave de qualquer resposta completa à pergunta “Por que falamos?”. (shrink)

One of the characteristics of what has been called “dogwhistle politics” is the presence of a rhetoric that targets minority groups implicitly. For example, terms like ‘illegals’ and ‘illegal immigrants’, used to target Latin-Americans, have come to permeate the American political discourse as well as everyday conversations. Here I focus on how such expressions, which I call illegality frame code words (IFCW, for short), can be countered by recalcitrant hearers. I begin with the assumption that IFCWs are racial code words, (...) conversational devices that convey implicit racial appeals while allowing for deniability. I then discuss how the existence of an Illegality Frame in the American Immigration debate supports their deniability. Lastly, I discuss how recalcitrant hearers can counter utterances that contain them. In particular, I propose reframing as an adequate strategy. In reframing, agents take control of the goals or the QUD (question under discussion) of the conversation to exclude certain topics from the common ground and include others. The idea is to “change the conversation” to neutralize problematic moves. This maneuver is advantageous not only because it helps to hinder veiled discriminatory practices, but also because it affords control over “the terms of the conversation”. (shrink)

In this paper, we defend that demonstratives are expressions of joint attention. Though this idea is not exactly new in the philosophical or linguistic literature, we argue here that their proponents have not yet shown how to incorporate these observations into more traditional theories of demonstratives. Our purpose is then to attempt to fill this gap. We argue that coordinated attentional activities are better integrated into a full account of demonstratives as meta-pragmatic information. Our claim is twofold. First, we claim (...) that pragmatically presupposing salience is a fundamental aspect of using demonstratives. Secondly, we hold that the pragmatics of demonstrating can only be properly understood in relation to meta-pragmatic conditions that have to do with joint attention. We use tests of truth-value gap as evidence for our claim. Our proposal provides us with a complete view of what speakers do and presuppose when engaging in acts of demonstrative reference through language. (shrink)

Bozickovic’s The Indexical Point of View is a richly informative and solid philosophical work about the problem of cognitive significance involving indexical thoughts and expressions. Although I tend to agree with most of what is said in the book, here I will make some comments on two minor correlated points regarding Bozickovic’s Fregean account of indirect speech reports (or ISRs). After presenting some of the author's ideas about reports, I will claim that the tracking and updating involved in ISRs is (...) of a complex kind that requires attention to the role played by speech reporters and their audiences. Following that, I will hold that a general theory of correct ISR strictly in Fregean terms (as Bozickovic’s) fails to account for that - at least directly. (shrink)

Determining what content is expressed by a demonstrative when its reference cannot be determined is a problem for those who assume that demonstrative reference is cognized by interpreters and demonstrative meaning has a mere indicative role. Here, I explore a concept of content that gives meaning a cognitively relevant role, namely, John Perry’s classificatory concept of content. With that purpose, I compare the interpretation of a deictic demonstrative in two cases: for an eavesdropper and a conversational participant, aiming to show (...) that meaning, in the form of reflexive rules, can be recruited to play the role of content when information is scarce. (shrink)