communication and televition on middle age

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This is a prepublication draft of a paper that will appear in its final and official form in Journal of Pragmatics .

Context and Communication: A Defense of Intentionalism

Martin Montminy

Abstract

Context, I argue, plays an evidential role, rather than a constitutive one,

regarding content. According to intentionalism, the view I defend, the content of

an utterance is fixed by the speakers intention. I explain why intentionalism

offers a more plausible picture of communication than antiintentionalism. I then

examine a number of specific indexicals, and show why we should take their

referents to be determined by the speakers intentions. I also explain briefly how

my defense of intentionalism can be extended to direct and indirect illocutionary

acts.

Context, it is often claimed, plays an important role in communication. More specifically,

context is said to affect the content of utterances. In this paper, I will be concerned with the

question of whether content can be said to be contextdependent in that sense. According to

intentionalism , the view I will defend, the content of an utterance is fixed by the speakers

intention. I will contrast intentionalism with its rival, anti intentionalism , an approach that has

received growing support recently. According to antiintentionalism, various aspects of the

conversational context are responsible for fixing the content of an utterance. The idea that

features of the context such as the presuppositions, purposes and shared beliefs of the

conversational participants, as well as saliency effects, contribute to determining the content of


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an utterance has been advocated by many philosophers and linguists. Jacob Mey, for instance,

writes that context is vitally important not only in assigning the proper values to reference and

implicature [], but also in dealing with other pragmatic issues (2001, p. 41). Mey holds that

pragmatic acts are similarly contextdependent. Pragmatic acts are akin to indirect illocutionary

acts. By uttering Im thirsty, a speaker may perform two illocutionary acts: the direct act of

informing the hearer that she is thirsty, and the indirect act of requesting something to drink.

According to Mey, pragmatic acts are essentially situated, for it is the context that determines

the nature of the pragmatic act (ibid., 211).1

According to intentionalism, context plays an evidential role, rather than a constitutive

one, regarding content. 2 I will explain why this view offers a more plausible picture of

communication than antiintentionalism. I will then examine a number of specific indexicals,

and show why we should take their referents to be determined by the speakers intentions. At

the end of the paper, I will explain briefly how my defense of intentionalism can be extended to

direct and indirect illocutionary acts.

1. Communication

Let me start by sketching a plausible account of communication. I will present this account in a

language that is as theoretically neutral as possible, and for simplicitys sake, I will consider only

1 Mey also points out that pragmatic acts do not necessarily involve use of language.

2 See Bach (2001, 2930; 2005, 3639) for a compelling defense of intentionalism, to which this

paper is indebted.


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assertions (or assertive utterances). 3 A speaker has a thought, which she wants to communicate

to the hearer. The speaker forms certain communicative intentions regarding the utterance she

makes: she, among other things, intends that utterance to express her thought. If everything

goes well, the hearer will be able to figure out what the utterance means, and thus have access

to the content of the speakers thought. Communicative success is, of course, more likely if the

conventional meaning of the sentence the speaker uses happens to match the content of her

thought. But in practice, this is not always the case. Ordinary speakers regularly utter sentences

whose conventional meanings are not identical to the contents they intend to convey. We

make use of indexicals such as I, here, and today, whose contents vary from context to

context. We also use sentences such as Smith is ready, Jones is tall, and Brown has had

enough, which do not express complete, truth evaluable, propositions. A speaker who intends

to convey a complete proposition in uttering Brown has had enough must implicitly supply the

thing of which she claims Brown to have had enough. But there are more ways in which what

we mean does not match the meanings of the sentences we use: ordinary speakers often use

words or sentences non literally . When a speaker uses a sentence ironically, the content of the

utterance departs from what the uttered sentence means. In all these cases, according to the

proposed account of communication, the speakers intention determines what her utterance

means. Note that this is true even when the speaker uses a sentence literally: what determines

that the utterance is to be taken literally is the speakers intention.

3 An assertion, or assertive utterance, may involve speech, writing, or any other type of

linguistic activity.


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According to this intentionalist picture, the content of the utterance corresponds to the

content of the belief motivating it.4 On this view, the relation between the speakers intention

and the content of the utterance is constitutive , that is, the intention fixes the content of the

utterance. Intentionalists regard an utterance as an intentional act of speaking (or writing,

typing, etc.). And as John Perry writes, The intentionality of linguistic acts is a special case of

the intentionality of purposeful action (2006, 316). Hence, interpreting an utterance amounts

to interpreting an action performed by an agent. If one wants to understand what action an

agent is performing by way of a certain behavior, one should try to figure out what the agent

intended to do. Similarly, if one wants to understand an utterance, one should try to figure out

what the speaker intended to convey. It is useful to distinguish an utterance from an utterance

token , which is the physical object produced by an utterance. 5 The content of an utterance

token is nonbasic: it derives from the content of the utterance that produced it.6

Intentionalists regard the relation between contextual features such as background

beliefs, purposes and presuppositions shared by the speaker and the hearer, and the content of

4 I am assuming that the utterance is sincere.

5 Two different utterances may involve the same utterance token (for example, when one uses

the same postit note saying I will be back in five minutes on different occasions), and a single

utterance may involve the productions of many utterance tokens (for example, when one

publishes a book, and many copies are in print).

6 Perry (2001, Chap. 3; 2006) convincingly argues for this point.


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the utterance as evidential .7 The hearers interpretation of the utterance may be very plausible,

given these contextual features, and yet be incorrect, if it does not match the speakers

communicative intention. Such cases of mismatch provide no reason for positing a different

notion of utterance content: we can simply say that in these cases, what the hearer justifiably

takes the utterance to mean does not correspond to what the utterance actually means.

One virtue of intentionalism is that it ensures first person authority over the content of

ones words. The speaker does not have to rely on contextual clues in order to figure out the

content of her utterance: her access to that content is as secure as her access to her thought

content. By contrast, antiintentionalism threatens access to the content of ones utterances,

by making it depend on features one may have no awareness of.

Antiintentionalism also faces a number of tricky issues that intentionalism easily avoids.

Consider first timing issues. Suppose that Nancy makes an utterance U at time t 1.

Unfortunately, contextual features at t 1 do not enable Nancys interlocutor to figure out the

content of U. Realizing that, Nancy then says, By U, I meant that p at a later time t 2. The

contextual features at t 2, which include Nancys statement about what she meant, seem to

entail that the content of U (at t 2) is p. But what about the period of time between t 1 and t 2?

Should we say that U had no content during that time, or that it had whatever content

contextual features at t 1 entailed? Holding that the content of U cannot be fixed by Nancys

subsequent remarks is problematic. If before producing U, Nancy specifies what she will mean

7 Bach (2001, 30) argues that the speakers communicative intention is not part of the context

of utterance.


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by it, then surely the content of U is fixed by Nancys specification. It seems odd that temporal

order would make such a difference. For example, it is counterintuitive to deny that the content

of U would be p if Nancy said, U, and by this I mean that p. But then, one is faced with the

question of how long a speaker remains in a position to fix what she meant by some explicit

remarks to that effect. A few minutes? An hour? A day? This issue is related to the more

general question of how to individuate contexts. If one holds that the content an utterance

depends on the context, then one is faced with the thorny business of context individuation.

Another set of tricky issues concerns cases involving two hearers who do not have the

same presuppositions, purposes, background knowledge, etc., and for whom different objects

are perceptually salient. These two hearers are likely to interpret the speakers utterance

differently. In such cases, should we say that the utterance is ambiguous? If not, what should

the interpretation be based on? This problem, of course, gets worse when several hearers with

various beliefs and perspectives are present. I do not claim that these problems are insoluble

for the antiintentionalist. However, the fact that intentionalism can easily avoid them should

count as a strike in its favor.

Intentionalism does not amount to a Humpty Dumpty view of meaning. The speakers

intention does not fix the meaning of the sentence she uses. All her intention fixes is how her

utterance of that sentence, whose conventional meaning is fixed independently of her, is to be

understood. In other words, intentionalism holds that what is up to the speaker is not sentence

meaning, but utterance content, or speaker meaning , as it is sometimes described.


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One may object that by making content depend on the speakers intention,

intentionalism renders content inaccessible to the hearer. 8 But there are many clues the hearer

can rely on to figure out the content of an utterance: perceptually salient contextual features,

shared beliefs, shared language, etc. In practice, the hearer will determine the content of the

utterance and the speakers communicative intention simultaneously . Communicative success

is facilitated when the speaker adequately exploits contextual clues in order to make her

content accessible to the hearer. And the hearers method of interpretation will be reliable if

these contextual clues are adequately ascertained. In cases in which interlocutors speak the

same language, have the same conversational goals, share relevant background beliefs, find the

same features perceptually salient, etc., communication is likely to succeed, and the hearer will

have no trouble figuring out the content of the speakers utterance. And in cases in which

interlocutors have reasons to believe that they do not have the same take on the relevant

contextual features, they will choose words and expressions that convey their thoughts more

explicitly. Instead of using the simple demonstrative that, for example, the speaker will use a

complex demonstrative such as that big oak tree in the yard. So there is no reason to think

that intentionalism makes utterance content inaccessible.9

One final remark before I examine indexicals. Intentionalists should not be understood

as being committed to a controversial Gricean, intentionbased semantics. The latter holds that

the semantic properties of words and sentences are explained in terms of speakers intentions;

8 See Gauker (2008, 362).

9 See kerman (forthcoming) and Bach (1992) for similar remarks.


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in other words, mental content is explanatory prior to linguistic meaning. The intentionalist

need not endorse this view. Consider for example a Davidsonian, interpretationist , picture,

according to which linguistic meaning and mental content are ultimately constituted by the

judgments of a fully informed radical interpreter. On this picture, linguistic meaning and mental

content are interdependent , in the sense that neither can be said to be explanatory prior to the

other. 10 Interpretationists can be intentionalists: they simply need to stipulate that the

judgments of a radical interpreter must be such that the content of a speakers utterance

matches her communicative intention.11

2. That

According to intentionalism, the speakers referential intention determines what an utterance

of that refers to. The speaker has a singular thought about a certain object, say, a tree. She

then forms the intention to refer to the tree, and chooses the demonstrative that to do so.

The speakers utterance of that, perhaps accompanied by a demonstration, enables the hearer

to figure out that she is referring to the tree. The demonstration is, of course, not mandatory:

the speaker could exploit the fact that the tree she is thinking about is already salient to the

hearer, because it was already the subject of the conversation, because it is perceptually

prominent to the hearer, or because of some other contextual feature. 12

10 See Davidson (1984) for many remarks to that effect.

11 This is actually Davidsons position. See in particular his (2005, essays 7 and 12).

12 See Bach (2006), Perry (2001, chap. 4) and Schiffer (2005) for convincing defenses of

intentionalism regarding demonstratives.


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It is important to note that what fixes reference is not merely the object the speaker has

in mind or wants to talk about, but the speakers referential , or directing , intention.13 Consider

David Kaplans example of the speaker who is unaware that the picture of Carnap behind him

was just replaced by one of Spiro Agnew. The speaker says, That is the picture of one of the

greatest philosophers of the twentieth century, pointing to the picture behind him. Although

the speakers intention is to demonstrate and refer to the picture of Carnap, this is not his

referential intention. His referential intention is to refer to the picture behind him. To put the

point differently, the speaker intends to refer to the picture of Carnap by referring to the

picture behind him. Many objections to intentionalism can be defused once that distinction is

made clear.14

On the intentionalist picture, an utterance of that may refer to an object that is

practically very difficult, if not impossible, for the hearer to recognize. Some antiintentionalists

find this consequence unsavory. Christopher Gauker proposes the following example:

Suppose that Harry and Sally are at a department store and Harry is trying on

ties. Harry has wrapped a garish pinkandgreen tie around his neck and is

looking at himself in a mirror. Sally is standing next to the mirror gazing toward

the tie around Harrys neck and says, That matches your new jacket. As a

matter of fact, Sally has been contemplating in thought the tie that Harry tried

13 See Bach (1991), Kaplan (1989b, 588) and Perry (2001, chap. 4).

14 See, for instance, Bachs (1991) responses to Reimers (1991) objections against

intentionalism.


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on two ties back. At first she thought she did not like it, but then it occurred to

her that it would look good with Harrys new jacket. We can even suppose that

in saying that what she intended to refer to was the tie two ties back. But

under the circumstances, Harry is in no position to realize that the tie she

intended to refer to was the tie two ties back and therefore is in no position to

take Sallys intention into account in identifying the reference of her

demonstrative that. The only thing one could reasonably expect Sallys

demonstrative that to refer to is the pinkandgreen tie around Harrys neck.

(2008, 363)15

I disagree with Gaukers claim that the referent of Sallys demonstrative is the tie around

Harrys neck. My intuition is rather that Sallys utterance of that refers to the tie that Harry

tried on two ties back, since that is what she intended to refer to.16 Harry is, of course, in no

position to figure out what Sally is referring to, and may well reasonably think that she is talking

15 See also Borg (2002) and Wettstein (1984), for defenses of antiintentionalist views regarding

that.

16 An intentionalist could also hold that in cases of misidentification, that has no reference. If

the hearer fails to identify the referent that the speaker intends the hearer to recognize, then

the speakers communicative intention is not fulfilled, and the utterance of that fails to refer.

This view is compatible with intentionalism, since one can hold that when that does have a

referent, that referent is determined by the speakers intention. See Bach (2006) for a defense

of this position. I will not discuss this view further here.


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about the tie he is currently trying on. The intuition invoked by Gauker thus concerns the

interpretation Harry may legitimately take to be the correct one rather than the correct

interpretation.17

One may think that this debate amounts to a mere clash of intuitions. But the

intentionalist position is better supported by the following scenario. Suppose that later on in

the day, Sally and Harry are having this conversation:

Harry: I decided to buy the pinkandgreen tie because you said it matches my

new jacket.

Sally: I never said that. I was talking about the yellow tie, which you tried on two

ties before the pinkandgreen one.

It would be odd for Harry to reply, Well, I now understand that you were trying to say that the

yellow tie matches my new jacket; but what you actually said was that the pinkandgreen tie

matches my new jacket. In other words, it would seem unreasonable for Harry to insist that

when Sally said That matches your new jacket, that actually referred to the pinkandgreen

tie, despite Sallys intention to refer to the yellow one. The right thing for Harry to do is to

concede that he misunderstood Sallys assertion, even though, he may add, he was quite

justified in believing that her utterance concerned the pinkandgreen tie. Cases of

communication breakdowns, and how such cases are generally thought to be resolvable, better

support the intentionalist picture. The way to settle the question of what an utterance was

about is simply to ask the speaker, if we are in a position to do so. Trying to recall the various

17 kerman (forthcoming) makes the same point.


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content of her utterance and Harrys interpretation, which was warranted by the relevant

contextual features. However, instead of saying that Sallys utterance of that failed to refer to

what she intended to refer to, we should say, more plausibly, that Sally failed to make clear

what her utterance actually referred to.

3. I

According to the traditional view, an utterance of I refers to the speaker. The referent of I

varies from context to context; however, the word I can be said to possess a standing

meaning, or character, according to which an utterance of I refers to the speaker. The

character of I can thus be said to determine the referent of I relative to a context of

utterance.

The traditional view is compatible with intentionalism: intentionalists can coherently

hold that a limited number of very specific contextual features, namely the speaker and the

time and place of the utterance, play a role in fixing the reference of some indexicals. These

contextual features are sometimes described as constituting the narrow context of utterance. 19

19 See, for instance, Perry (2001, chap. 4). This is not to say that the speakers intention plays no

role with respect to fixing the reference of I: what makes it the case that an utterance of I is

literal, and thus that its reference is determined by the narrow context, is the speakers

intention. Narrow context determines the reference of automatic indexicals such as I, now,

here and today; however, it does not determine the reference of discretionary indexicals

such as that and there.


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the narrow context is intentionally determined by the speaker and the referent is the agent of

the narrow context.

Some have complained that Predellis account is not restrictive enough. It seems that a

speakers utterance of I does not, in general, refer to whatever person the speaker happens to

have in mind. As Corazza et al. (ibid.) point out, if, instead of posting his note on Joes door, Ben

stepped out of his office and said to the students, I am not here today, intending I to refer to

Joe, that would not make it the case that his utterance of I refers to Ben rather than to

himself.22 Predellis account thus seems inadequate.

Does the antiintentionalist approach fare better? Consider the conventionalist account

proposed by Corazza et al. (ibid.), according to which the referent of an utterance of I is fixed

by the social or conventional setting in which the utterance takes place. Corazza et al. contend

that there is a convention to the effect that I on a note attached to an office door refers to the

usual occupant of that office. This explains why I refers not to Ben, the person who wrote the

note, but to Joe, the offices occupant.23

There are numerous counterexamples to this conventionalist account, though. An

occurrence of I on a note attached to an office door can very well refer to someone other than

22 See also RomdenhRomluc (2006) for similar counterexamples.

23 Corazza et al. have a very liberal understanding of conventions. To Predellis (2002) objection

that their account entails an implausible proliferation of conventions, Gorvett (2005, 306307)

responds that conventions are established regularly among language users, sometimes even

within small groups.


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the occupant of the office. Many office doors are adorned with signs containing quotes, jokes,

ironic statements, etc. In such cases, I is often not understood as referring to the occupant of

the office.

Suppose that in 1974, shortly after the many irregularities committed by Nixon during

his presidency were revealed, Bill, who is known by his colleagues as a lifelong Democrat, posts

the following note on the door of his office: Well, Im not a crook. Ive earned everything Ive

got by lying, misappropriating taxpayer money and breaking the law. Bills note is obviously a

parody of Nixons infamous declaration that hes not a crook.24 Clearly, in Bills note, I refers

not to Bill, the occupant of the office, but to Richard Nixon.

Or consider the following case. Jeff and Bert, together with their colleagues,

participated in the towns annual soccer tournament for local businesses. Their team made it to

the final, but unfortunately, they lost the game because Bert accidentally scored in his own

goal. The following day at work, Jeff decides to mock Berts performance by posting a note on

his office door saying, I aimed, I shot, and I scored the winning goal! Too bad it was for the

other team. As Jeffs colleagues would immediately understand, I, in this note, refers not to

Jeff, the occupant of the office, but to Bert.

Corazza et al. may respond that joke notes such as these constitute a conventional

setting all of their own (2002, 15). But it is doubtful that there is a convention that fixes the

24 During a televised questionandanswer session with the press on November 17, 1973, Nixon

declared, People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I'm not a

crook. I've earned everything I've got.


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referent of I when I is used jokingly: I, on a note on someones office door, can be used

jokingly to refer to pretty much anyone. At any rate, counterexamples to their view are not

limited to joke notes. Consider the case of Jessica, a Christian pastoral counselor, who has

attached a note to her office door saying, I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me will

never go hungry, and he who believes in Me will never be thirsty. Clearly, in this note, I refers

not to Jessica but to Jesus.25

There is another, more serious problem with the conventionalist account, though. Every

word is such that one can introduce a convention that contravenes its meaning. Suppose that

Ashley and Courtney agree to switch their uses of I and you when they meet at the bus stop

in the morning on their way to class: they use I when one would normally use you, and vice

versa. Surely, this use of I is not licensed by the meaning this word has in English. Ashley and

Courtney are not using I literally: they are instead assigning the meaning of you to I. Their

use is analogous to that of a speaker who stipulates that for the duration of the conversation,

he will apply the word cat to dogs, and the word dog to cats. In both cases, new, nonliteral

meanings are assigned to old terms. Hence, the conventionalist account categorizes as literal

uses of I that are clearly not so. Pace the conventionalist, the meaning or character of I

cannot be that the referent of an utterance of I is fixed by the conventional setting regulating

this utterance.

25 See also Predelli (2002) and RomdenhRomluc (2006) for similar objections to the

conventionalist account.


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The case of Ben and Joe imagined by Corazza et al., I now want to argue, should be

construed in the same way: since it involves a nonliteral use of I, it does not constitute a

counterexample to the traditional view. Consider the following case, which I take to be

analogous in the relevant respects.26 Two people see Smith in the distance and mistake him for

Jones. They have a brief exchange. One asks, Do you see what Jones is doing? The other

answers, Jones is raking the leaves. Now suppose that Brown knows that the person they are

talking about is Smith. Brown overhears their exchange and wants to join in. But since he

loathes confrontation and fears that the two interlocutors may be argumentative, he decides

not to correct their mistake. Brown says, Jones has been raking leaves the whole afternoon.

Clearly, on this occasion, the person Brown is referring to by Jones is Smith, even though the

name Jones refers not to Smith but to Jones. To account for this, we need to distinguish

between the literal referent of Jones, which is Jones, and the speakers referent of Jones,

which, in this case, is Smith.27 Typically, the speakers referent and the literal referent coincide;

however, in this example, they do not.

The case of Ben and Joe should be dealt with in the same way. Ben uses I to refer to

Joe, and manages to do so successfully, because the students believe that Joe is the author of

the note. 28 From this, we should conclude not that Joe is the literal referent of I, but that Joe is

26 The example is inspired by Kripke (1977).

27 Kripke (1977) talks of the speakers referent and the semantic referent.

28 In the right circumstances, the students could also take I to refer to Joe even though they do

not think he is the author of the note: for example, although they are aware that Ben wrote the


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the speakers referent of I. The literal referent of I is Ben, the author of the note. The

students take Joe to be the literal referent of I, but this is irrelevant. They are mistaken about

the literal referent of I, because they are mistaken about who wrote the note. Their epistemic

position is thus analogous to that of Browns interlocutors, who take Smith to be the literal

referent of Jones, because they believe that the man they see in the distance is Jones.

Now, according to intentionalism, it is the speakers intention that fixes the content of a

nonliteral utterance. 29 Hence, in the case of Ben and Joe, the speakers referent of I is

determined by Bens referential intention. Of course, a speaker may not always succeed in

communicating the content of a nonliteral utterance. If Ben steps out of his office and says to

the students, I am not here today, they will not grasp the nonliteral content that he is trying

to convey. The students may take I to refer to Ben, if they assume that Ben uses that word

literally. Or, more likely, they will wonder what Ben means. However, Ben could manage to

communicate this nonliteral content by, for example, imitating Joes accent, his tone of voice,

or his speech mannerisms. In general, in order to successfully convey the content of a pretense

use of I, a certain miseenscne is required. The hearer may misidentify the speakers

referent, or be uncertain about what this referent is, if the speakers performance is wanting;

note, the students know that Ben and Joe are good friends, and trust Ben to reliably speak on

Joes behalf.

29 The speakers intention does not determine the literal referent of I; however, it determines

whether the utterance of I is literal.


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however, this does not negate the fact that the speakers referent of I is fixed by the speakers

intention.

4. Now

According to the traditional account, the reference of an utterance of now is determined by

the time of the utterance, which is a feature of the narrow context. The word now can thus be

said to possess a standing meaning, or character, according to which an utterance of now

refers to the time of the utterance. 30

Some uses of now seem to undermine the traditional view. Suppose I put a postit note

on my office door saying, I am not here now. It seems that now, in this note, refers not to the

time I wrote the note, but to the time the note is read. Similarly, in the answering machine

message I am not here now, now refers not to the time of the recording, but to the time of

the call.

These cases do not obviously threaten intentionalism. The intentionalist can hold that in

such cases, rather than having its reference determined automatically by the time of the

utterance, now has its reference determined by the speakers referential intention. The

30 The traditional view is incomplete, though. Two simultaneous utterances of now could have

different referents: one could refer to a few seconds, and the other to a whole year.

Intentionalists hold that the extent of time referred to by now is determined by the speakers

intention. Since none of the antiintentionalist challenges discussed in this section concern this

issue, I will say no more about it.


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speaker intends her utterance to be deferred to some future time.31 In other words, the

speaker intends now to refer to what she believes will be the time of perceptionthat is, the

time she expects the note to be read or the time she expects the message to be heardand

this referential intention fixes the reference of now.

The intentionalist view is supported by the following example, due to Predelli (1998).

Suppose Jane expects her partner Susan to come home at six oclock. Jane writes I am not here

now on a postit note at four oclock, intending to inform Susan that she will be away from

home at six. But Susan comes home later than expected, and reads Janes note at ten oclock. I

share Predellis intuition that now, in this note, refers to six oclock, the expected time of

perception, rather than ten oclock, the actual time the note was read.

But not everyone agrees. John Perry (2006) holds that in this case, Jane has a referential

intention to refer to the actual time of perception: she thinks that by referring to the time

Susan will read the note, she will refer to six oclock. Note that Perrys view is also

intentionalist: what makes it the case that the referent of now is ten oclock is the fact that

Jane intended now to refer to the actual time of perception, which, in this case, turned out to

be ten oclock. Perrys view seems correct with respect to answering machine messages.

Typically, when we record greeting messages, we do not have particular times of call in mind:

we intend now to refer to whatever time a call will be made. But the case of Jane and Susan

31 The notion of deferred utterance is proposed by Sidelle (1991). However, Sidelle holds that

the utterance is deferred to the actual time of perception rather than the expected time of

perception.


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strikes me as different. Jane has a particular time of perception in mind, namely, six oclock, and

it is natural to think that her referential intention concerns that time, rather than the time

Susan will come home. That said, we may imagine a similar story in which Janes referential

intention is what Perry takes it to be. In any case, this debate does not affect the intentionalist

point: in each scenario, what fixes the referent of a deferred utterance of now is the speakers

referential intention.

Other objections have been raised against the traditional account. The word now,

many have pointed out, has a demonstrative use. While recounting the events leading up to

Napoleons invasion of Russia, a narrator may choose to use the present tense and say,

(1) Napoleon is now preparing to invade Russia.

Intuitively, in this utterance, now refers not to the time of utterance, but to a certain time in

the narrative, in this case June, 1812. This demonstrative use of now is no threat to

intentionalism. The intentionalist can hold that when used demonstratively, now is roughly

equivalent to this time, or at this time, and its reference is determined in the same way the

reference of this is, that is, by the speakers referential intention. Hence, the utterance of

now in (1) refers to June, 1812, because this is the time the speaker intends to refer to.32

There are at least three possible ways to elaborate on this intentionalist approach. First,

according to what we may call the single meaning view , now has a single meaning that covers

32 RomdenhRomluc (2002) proposes a counterexample to this intentionalist picture. But see

Predelli (2002, 312) for a convincing response.


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both its standard and demonstrative uses.33 Predelli (1998), for example, holds that according

to the meaning of now, an utterance of now refers to the time coordinate of the context of

interpretation intended by the speaker. In other words, the character of now is a function

from a context of interpretation to a time, and the speakers intention fixes the context of

interpretation. A second approach holds that now is ambiguous. In addition to having a

standard meaning according to which an utterance of now refers to the time of utterance,

now also has a demonstrative meaning. Let us call this the two meaning view .34 A third option

the intentionalist has is to retain the traditional view, according to which now has only one

meaning, its standard one. On this view, the demonstrative use is a nonliteral: it is not allowed

by the meaning of now.

Given my purpose in this paper, I do not have to adjudicate among these three views.

However, let me explain briefly why I think the traditional view is the most plausible. It is

tempting to think of the demonstrative use of now as literal, for it is quite common and easily

understood by speakers. But commonality should not be equated with literality. Kent Bach

(1994, chap. 4) uses the locution standardized nonliterality to describe the case of sentences

and expressions that have a common nonliteral use. For example, we commonly say, Youre

not going to die, to mean not that our interlocutor is not going to die (simpliciter), but that he

33 By the standard use of now, I mean the use according to which an utterance of now refers

to the time of the utterance. For simplicitys sake, I am ignoring the deferred use of now.

34 See Perry (2006), who reluctantly treats the demonstrative use of now as a separate

sense.


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or she is not going to die from a certain ailment or injury . In other words, we commonly speak

nonliterally when we use sentences of the form S is not going to die. One can appeal to

standardized nonliterality in order to explain the exclusive use of or, as in the statement You

can have coffee or tea. The word or has a unique, inclusive meaning; however, sentences of

the form p or q are commonly used nonliterally to mean p or q , but not both. Arguments

such as these rely on Grices Modified Occams Razor , according to which [s]enses are not to

be multiplied beyond necessity (1989, 47). Appeal to standardized nonliterality allows us to

explain the use of a word without invoking a separate meaning or sense.

The traditional view can be similarly motivated by Grices principle. According to the

traditional view, the demonstrative use of now is an instance of standardized nonliterality. It

is a pretense use analogous to the pretense use of I: the speaker pretends that the events that

actually took place in the past and taking place now, and uses the fake present tense to do so.35

In other words, the speaker is pretending to be speaking at the time of the described events:

she uses now as a device to pick out a certain time, usually made obvious by the context. This

use should thus be considered nonliteral.

I do not purport this argument in favor of the traditional view to be decisive. One

difficulty is that there is no clear line between standardized nonliterality and literality. An

expression or sentence may go seamlessly from having a standardized nonliteral use to having

a new conventional meaning. Novel metaphors, for example, get picked up and become

current, and then gradually die, that is, they become part of the lexicon. There is no

35 Note that the demonstrative use of now may also concern events taking place in the future.


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determinate moment at which the metaphor went from being live to being dead. At any rate,

as I emphasized above, the important point, given my purposes in this paper, is that the three

alternative accounts are all intentionalist.

5. Taking Stock

I have argued for the superiority of intentionalism over antiintentionalism. Intentionalism

offers a more plausible picture of how communication works. It also ensures that speakers have

access to and control over the content of their utterances, and avoids some tricky issues that

antiintentionalism faces. I have also examined the various uses we make of indexicals such as

that, I and now, and argued that intentionalism proposes an overall better account of these

uses than antiintentionalism does.

It would be wrong, however, to conclude that interpretation always proceeds according

to the intentionalist model. Consider, for example, the interpretation of artworks. According to

intentionalism in aesthetics, an artwork means what the artist intended it to mean. Many

authors have argued that this view goes against our interpretive practice.36 We can correctly

interpret an artwork, they point out, with little or no knowledge about the artist. Furthermore,

36 See, among others, Wimsatt and Beardsley (1954). But the issue is both controversial and

complex. Levinson (1996), for example, argues for hypothetical intentionalism , a view that holds

that the meaning of a literary text is what a fully informed interpreter would hypothesize the

intended meaning of the text to be. And Carroll (2000) defends a view he calls modest actual

intentionalism , according to which the correct interpretation of a literary text must be such that

is compatible with the authors actual intention.


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when producing an interpretation, we often disregard the artists claims about what the work

means. In other words, in artwork interpretation, we dissociate the works meaning from the

authors intentions and actions.

Far from undermining intentionalism, though, the case of artwork interpretation

highlights what characterizes ordinary communication. On the antiintentionalist picture in

aesthetics, artworks are importantly different from the utterance tokens we produce in

everyday conversations. Artworks achieve autonomy from their authors, and become genuine

objects of interpretation on their own, rather than objects that have content only derivatively.

We cannot say the same thing regarding the utterance tokens we produce in ordinary

conversations: their contents derive from the contents of intentional acts of speaking.

6. Illocutionary Acts

The arguments I have made in defense of intentionalism apply to other contextsensitive

aspects of speech, including illocutionary acts . As several authors37 have argued, what

determines the illocutionary force of a speech act is the speakers intention. Whether an

utterance of You may get hurt is a warning or a threat depends on the speakers intention. An

illocutionary act is a purposeful action, and as such, it should be regarded as depending

essentially on the speakers intention. Hence, understanding what illocutionary act has been

performed is a matter of figuring out what the speaker intended to do.

37 See Bach and Harnish (1979), Davidson (1984, Essays 8 & 18) and Strawson (1964).


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There is, however, an important exception to intentionalism regarding illocutionary acts.

In some cases, illocutionary force is a matter of convention : an act counts as an act of a certain

type in virtue of a certain institutional rule. Peter Strawson gives the following examples:

[T]he fact that the word guilty is pronounced by the foreman of the jury in

court at the proper moment constitutes his utterance as the act of bringing in a

verdict; and that this is so is certainly a matter of the conventional procedures of

the law. Similarly, it is a matter of convention that if the appropriate umpire

pronounces a batsman out, he thereby performs the act of giving the man out,

which no player or spectator shouting Out! can do. (1964, 443)

These illocutionary acts are governed by conventions, and because of that, it makes sense to

dissociate the illocutionary force from the speakers intention.38 Illocutionary force depends

instead on preexisting conventions, which determine what contextual features must be present

for an utterance of that force to be performed. But it is a mistake to generalize from these

cases. As Strawson emphasizes, the doctrine of the conventional nature of the illocutionary act

does not hold generally (ibid., 445).39 There is no convention, for example, that determines the

38 As Bach and Harnish remark, in some cases, a conventional illocutionary act and a non

conventional one can be performed by the same utterance: If a policeman says to a person

You are under arrest, he is both arresting the person and telling him (indirectly) that he has

violated the law (1979, 117).

39 Strawson is criticizing Austins (1962) conception of illocutionary force. See also Bach and

Harnish (1979, chap. 7) for a similar criticism.


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illocutionary force of an utterance of I will be at the reception. Such an utterance can be made

in the conversational setting to perform a promise, a prediction, a threat, etc. Whether it be

about utterance content or illocutionary force, there are thus very good reasons to resist the

antiintentionalist view that context plays a constitutive role rather than a merely evidential

one.40

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