Review - Language in Context
Selected Essays
by Jason Stanley
Oxford University Press, 2007
Review by R.A. Goodrich, Ph.D.
Sep 23rd 2008 (Volume 12, Issue 39)

What Jason Stanley explores above all is the fundamental relationship between our words and our world.  In many respects, analytical philosophers over the past century more so than linguists have shaped the very direction our understanding of language has taken in terms of meaning (or semantics) and it use (or pragmatics).  Since then, two broad perspectives have emerged between those who investigate pragmatics as an alternative to logico-linguistic enquiries into semantics and those who take it to be but a supplement.  Stanley, who ultimately plumbs for the latter perspective, prefaces Language in Context by reflecting upon its composition.  Six of its seven chapters, appearing as articles since the beginning of the decade, were explicitly written as if they were solo and co-authored chapters for an eventual book, a book aiming to give "a specific metaphysical account of how context interacts with word meaning and sentence structure to create content" (v). Beneath this aim, Stanley contends that a crucial issue is at stake: those who wish to reduce our reliance upon semantic explanations of contextual interactions have all too often failed to develop "explicit pragmatic theories" of meaning and thus provide us with "testable predictions" (v). 

Rather than reiterate technical discussions generated by the previously published papers constituting this volume, we shall principally introduce the initial portions of Stanley's enquiry into the so-called semantic-pragmatic distinction before concluding with a more cognitive than logico-linguistic set of questions. By so doing, we intend to demonstrate why readers of Metapsychology who are themselves not professional philosophers should give the often complex arguments of Stanley careful consideration whether or not they finally reject or uphold them. 

I

Let us begin by setting the context.  When Alyssa tells Alessio, "Now I can see what you are doing here; I couldn't before down there," expressions such as "now," "I," "you," "here," and so forth are what Stanley regards as explicitly contextually sensitive. Indeed, their reference can be said to operate independently of the speaker's intention.  Their reference shifts from context to context, speaker to speaker.  So, even if Alessio used exactly the same words a few moments later, he may be saying something quite different.  His use of "I" and "you," for instance, has shifted its point of reference to Alessio as the speaker and Alyssa as the listener being addressed, reversing Alyssa's references some moments beforehand.  Such expressions—usually called "indexical" by philosophers of language and "deictic" by linguists—are, ever since the seminal works of David Kaplan and John Perry on "demonstratives" in the 'seventies, regarded as having two kinds of meaning. The first, called its "standing meaning" by Stanley (2ff.), is categorized as the linguistic or lexical meaning (the meaning of "I," for example, is typically expressed whenever speakers make mention of or refer to themselves whilst speaking).  The second kind of meaning is its "content" which varies according to different contexts (so that we also talk of the referential meaning of "I" in the above example as Alyssa in one context of utterance and as Alessio in the other).  What complicates matters is when utterances attempt to state generalisations such as "Every man believes he has inalienable rights" where the occurrence of "he" is bound to the quantifying phrase "every man" or when utterances contain anaphoric references to previous items such as "Alessio guessed the identity of Alyssa's true love; he was so happy" where the "he" becomes interpretable, albeit ambiguously, on the prior spoken occurrence of either "Alessio" or "Alyssa's true love."  In neither case is "he" being used indexically or deictically.  Indeed, for expressions to be purely indexical or deictic, they cannot rely upon, say, the speaker's pointing gesture or gaze nor upon his or her intentions; in the last resort, they must depend upon the "standing" lexical or linguistic meaning.  The reference of "I" in any context is the speaker of the utterance or of the utterance quoted.

Jason Stanley's project, under the broad heading of contextual sensitivity, is to argue for ways of extending paradigmatic cases of indexicality of the kind exemplified above.  Hence, we find him delving into such cases as "Alyssa is munching a focaccia."  Unlike the present tense statement occurring at seven o'clock on the 29th April 2008 "Alyssa is munching a focaccia at seven o'clock on the 29th April 2008" or even the present tense utterance "Alyssa is munching a focaccia now," simply saying she "is munching a focaccia" does not appear to have an actual or articulated phrase or term within the utterance tied to the time of utterance.  If there is no such phrase or term (such as the italicized adverbial expressions of time in the first two examples), then the reference being made by the utterance depends upon more than the "content" kind of meaning issuing from the terms and their syntactic combination within the utterance itself.  Again, take the example of "Alyssa is surprisingly slender."  Although such an utterance might express the "content" meaning that Alyssa is unexpectedly slender for a woman with a ravenous appetite, there does not appear to be a term or a phrase within the utterance which, in connexion with some context, conveys the attribute of being a woman with a ravenous appetite.  Here, it seems, we find utterances whose predicates use gradable or comparative adjectives are not merely the sum of the content of words within the utterance and their syntactic configuration.  In short, both tense and gradable adjectives are contextually sensitive.

Even beyond such intuitively acceptable cases, Stanley (e.g. 112ff. & 117ff.) also proposes that quantifying expressions found in generalizations are contextually sensitive.  Alessio, for instance, might say in one context, "Every caffè macchiato has too much milk," and mean that every caffè macchiato prepared by his Aunt has more than a dash of milk in it.  However, Alyssa in a different context may utter the same sentence and mean that every macchiato served at her local bar has more than a dash of milk in it.  The utterance has different contents in those respective contexts as if there were a concealed variable connected with "every caffè macchiato."  In this as in previous examples, Stanley contends that "we draw upon extra-linguistic context to help us decide what to interpret" (37).  

Yet, it is at this juncture that debate arises over whether or not we can coherently distinguish between lexical or semantic references and speaker or pragmatic references. Here, as Stanley acknowledges (24-25, 32-33 & 135-142), there are competing ways of construing the semantic-pragmatic distinction because there is often "no stable agreement" about the distinction or about the "scope of... how much of what is intuitively communicated is constituted by semantic content" (134-135).  Traditionally, the distinction has been drawn between what words mean—semantics—and what use speakers make of words—pragmatics.  However, the contrast here does not specify the relationship of lexical meaning to context.  Nor does it distinguish between the wider context by which we might ascertain a speaker's intention and the narrower context which specifically provides the meaning of contextually sensitive expressions.  Contemporary debate, therefore, has centered upon ways of conceptualizing lexical meaning purely in semantic, non-contextualized terms and lexical references that acquire their meaning in context.  This, in turn, has led to the notion that the pragmatic is what speakers communicate "over and above the semantic content...uttered" (138), or, more plainly, that there can be a difference between what we say and what we mean.  If Alessio were to ask us, "Where is the stunning Alyssa today?" and we were to reply, "Her car is parked outside Giancarlo's townhouse," we have implicated or are presupposing something about her actions of the day and her more enduring personal relationships over and above a simple statement about the location of her motorcar.  To that extent, then, "extra-linguistic context plays a role in determining the semantic content of certain expressions in context" (140).  For those uneasy with the limitations of the traditional conception and with the "perceived permissiveness" (148) of the alternative construal of the distinction, we find them attempting to forge a third approach.  The third approach becomes embroiled in efforts to distinguish between those "weak" pragmatic effects affecting and those not affecting semantic content (141). Stanley throughout Language in Context finds such efforts less efficacious than re-conceptualizing the second approach by way of semantic constraints encoded in utterances that operate systematically upon contextual influences.

II

So far, we have only begun to sketch the terrain of Stanley's enquiry.  In the space remaining, what are some of the crucial landmarks of contextual sensitivity he has neglected?  Theorists such as Noam Chomsky who are "pessimistic" that we can ever systematically explain "how extra-linguistic context, together with linguistic meaning and grammatical structure, give rise to content" (7; cf. 160ff. & 231ff.) stand accused of failing to account for crucial facets of communication.  Included here, according to Stanley, is their inability to account for such questions as: How can "language-users (even at very young ages)" possess the capacity to "smoothly grasp information about the world from sentences they have never previously encountered" (8-9)?  How, relatedly, can "language-users...so smoothly move from linguistic comprehension to action," that is, how is "the connection between speech and action" made explicable (9)? 

Yet, beneath this critique, Stanley concedes, his "project begins where questions about standing linguistic meaning leave off" (2).  It is a concession that eliminates any consideration of the semantic-pragmatic distinction not only from the need to consider actual instances of spoken discourse, but also from a developmental point of view.  To the first charge, Stanley can doubtless defend himself on the grounds of including a discussion of elliptical utterances, so characteristic of everyday exchanges, on several occasions (e.g. 40ff., 82ff. & 206ff.).  Nor does it appear that verbalizable instances of "essentially contested" concepts—terms replete with evaluative overtones such as "art" and "democracy"—act to undermine his presumption that words must refer to the world for language to be communicative.

The second charge taken from a linguistic, cognitive, and behavioral developmental perspective is of quite a different order.  Consider, for the moment, the recent debate over the "conjunction fallacy," the role of "and" not pursued by Stanley (163ff.), yet proving to be a litmus test for semantic and pragmatic inference.  Logically, the probability of two occurrences—alpha and omega—cannot be more than the probability of either one of them.  Yet the co-ordinating conjunction "and" is highly sensitive to context.  By saying "Giancarlo has been hospitalized and Alyssa is seeing Lucantonio," we are not simply joining two clauses or merely observing the intersection of two events.  We could equally be expressing our surprise, perhaps even our disgust.  Others might take us to be recounting the temporal sequence of events and others again might interpret us to be outlining the cause of her subsequent behavior.  Yet research into children's language constantly reveals that, when reversing the sequence of events such as "Giancarlo went to hospital and broke both elbows and crashed his motorbike," younger children cling to word order, to the explicitly articulated, in a manner more akin to the logical interpretation above.

Such considerations lead to questions needing to be explored. Does the semantic-pragmatic distinction in any of its three conceptualizations identified by Stanley undergo any profound changes with children's speech accompanying action and their speech detached from action?  This and other questions are testimony to the kind of thinking provoked by Language in Context.  For example, does the distinction become significantly transformed with children's speech directed at others and their speech directed at self?  Is the distinction in some sense an emergent condition for children's capacity to verbalize what they apprehend sequentially or successively and what they apprehend simultaneously or holistically?  Again, does the distinction somehow function as a precondition for the existence of ad hoc concrete experiential thinking or the verbalized emergence of systemic abstract hierarchical thinking or both?  Finally, how might the complexities seemingly inherent in the distinction provide practitioners with a more nuanced understanding and treatment of semantic-pragmatic disorders in cases of impaired development?

© 2008 R.A. Goodrich

R.A. Goodrich teaches in the School of Communication & Creative Arts, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia, co-edits the online refereed arts-practice journal, Double Dialogues, and currently co-ordinates with Maryrose Hall a pilot study of a number of children within the autistic spectrum of disorders.