J. L. Austin and Literal Meaning. (19th January 2012)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Hansen, Nat
• Is Part Of: European journal of philosophy. Volume 22:Number 4(2014:Dec.)
• Page Start: 617
• Page End: 632
• Publication Date: 2012-01-19
• Subjects: Philosophy -- Periodicals; Philosophy, European -- Periodicals; Philosophy, Modern -- 20th century -- Periodicals; 190
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0378.2011.00510.x
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0966-8373

Abstract

<abstract abstract-type="main"> <title>Abstract</title> <p>Alice Crary has recently developed a radical reading of J. L. Austin's philosophy of language. The central contention of Crary's reading is that Austin gives convincing reasons to reject the idea that sentences have context‐invariant literal meaning. While I am in sympathy with Crary about the continuing importance of Austin's work, and I think Crary's reading is deep and interesting, I do not think literal sentence meaning is one of Austin's targets, and the arguments that Crary attributes to Austin or finds Austinian in spirit do not provide convincing reasons to reject literal sentence meaning. In this paper, I challenge Crary's reading of Austin and defend the idea of literal sentence meaning.</p> </abstract>