Exploding Explicatures. (June 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Borg, Emma
• Is Part Of: Mind & language. Volume 31:Number 3(2016:Jun.)
• Page Start: 335
• Page End: 355
• Publication Date: 2016-06
• Subjects: Psycholinguistics -- Periodicals; Thought and thinking -- Periodicals; Language and languages -- Philosophy -- Periodicals; 153.42
• DOI: 10.1111/mila.12109
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0268-1064

Abstract

Abstract: 'Pragmaticist' positions posit a three‐way division within utterance content between: (i) the standing meaning of the sentence, (ii) a somewhat pragmatically enhanced meaning which captures what the speaker explicitly conveys (following Sperber and Wilson, I label this the 'explicature'), and (iii) further indirectly conveyed propositions which the speaker merely implies. Here I re‐examine the notion of an explicature, asking how it is defined and what work explicatures are supposed to do. I argue that explicatures get defined in three different ways and that these distinct definitions can and do pull apart. Thus the notion of an explicature turns out to be ill‐defined.