Prospective interpretation

Semantic and pragmatic theories tend to deal with context-change in two radically opposing ways. Some view it as theoretically irrelevant, interpreting each sentence relative to the context as it happens to be at the moment of its utterance. Others view it as theoretically fundamental, proposing to...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Philosophical studies 2017-06, Vol.174 (6), p.1605-1616
Main Author: Szabó, Zoltán Gendler
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
BOOK SYMPOSIUM ON ROBERT STALNAKER'S CONTEXT
Context
Education
Epistemology
Ethics
Metaphysics
Philosophy
Philosophy of Language
Philosophy of Mind
Pragmatics
Pragmatism
Semantics
Theory
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Summary:Semantic and pragmatic theories tend to deal with context-change in two radically opposing ways. Some view it as theoretically irrelevant, interpreting each sentence relative to the context as it happens to be at the moment of its utterance. Others view it as theoretically fundamental, proposing to view context-change as the very subject-matter of the theory of interpretation. Robert Stalnaker's book Context steers a middle course between the extremes–to keep the semantics mostly static while letting the pragmatics go mostly dynamic. Within his framework, context-change matters because interpretation is sometimes prospective, relying not on the context as it is at the time of utterance but on the context as it is anticipated to be somewhat later. This paper critically examines how Stalnaker makes use of prospective interpretation in accounting for accommodation and in capturing the insights of expressivism.
ISSN:0031-8116
1573-0883
DOI:10.1007/s11098-016-0780-6