In defence of a code: linguistic meaning and propositionality in verbal communication

Abstract

Linguistic encoding is seen as playing a necessary but not solely sufficient role in speaker meaning by philosophers of Ordinary Language, such as Grice and Strawson. Despite well-rehearsed problems with some of Grice's and Strawson's specific theories, this general model has much to recommend it to present day linguistics. Recent accounts have tended either overtly to deny the existence of a code, such as those offered within the framework of integrationism, or radically to limit its contribution to speaker meaning. Accounts of this latter type tend to dwell on the fact that the linguistic code cannot explain all aspects of the meaning of an utterance in context, and therefore to deny that encoded meaning can be propositional. Defining a proposition as a set of conditions for truth, however, it is possible to maintain that encoded meaning determines a proposition, expressed by a sentence, which is complete in itself, but radically underspecified with respect to the proposition expressed by any utterance of that sentence in context. Such an approach can offer a way of addressing the rather ambiguous place afforded to the linguistic code in Levinson's account of pragmatic intrusion, and Sperber and Wilson's relevance theory.