Abstract
Most philosophical and linguistic theorizing about meaning focuses on cooperative forms of communication, and for good reasons. However, a significant amount of verbal communication involves parties whose interests are not fully aligned, or who do not know their degree of alignment. Such strategic contexts are theoretically revealing because they lay bare minimal conditions on communication that can be occluded in more fully charitable contexts. In such contexts, speakers sometimes turn to insinuation: the communication of beliefs, requests, and other attitudes 'offrecordi', so that the speaker's main communicative point remains unstated in away that permits deniability. I argue that insinuation is a form of speaker's meaning in which speakers communicate potentially risky attitudes and contents without adding them to the conversational record, or sometimes even to the common ground.
| Original language | American English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | New Work on Speech Acts |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press |
| Pages | 40-66 |
| Number of pages | 27 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9780198738831 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Aug 23 2018 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Arts and Humanities
Keywords
- Common ground
- Grice
- Implicature
- Insinuation
- Lewis
- Meaning
- Scoreboard
- Stalnaker
- Strategic contexts