Insinuation is committing

Abstract

Since insinuation – through which speakers implicitly convey negative ascriptions nonovertly (Bell, 1997) – is in theory plausibly deniable, many scholars who have tried to account for the phenomenon (e.g., Fricker, 2012, Bell, 1997, Bertucelli Papi, 2014) have concluded that insinuators cannot be taken to be committed to the content of what they insinuate. Against this classical view, Fraser (2001) and Camp (2018) consider that insinuation is committing, i.e., meant to be recognised as being meant to be recognised. In this paper, I start by providing an overview of the classical and the modern account of insinuation by highlighting and discussing their differences. I then tackle the problem of properly accounting for insinuation in terms of the relationship between commitment and plausible deniability, and outline a relevance-theoretic account, compatible with the modern account, with arguments to justify that contextually relevant insinuations are indeed committing.