Communicating with colourings

In Piotr Stalmaszczyk & Martin Hinton (eds.), Philosophical Approaches to Language and Communication (vol 2). Peter Lang. pp. 151-170 (2022)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

A speaker can express the same thought, true under the same conditions, while using different expressions and grammatical constructions. According to Frege, these are differences in colourings. Colourings may convey additional contents; in that, they resemble Gricean conventional implicatures. Sander (2019) argues that Gricean implicatures do not subsume the category of colourings, as some colourings do not communicate their content. I show that this argument relies on a notion of communication focused on the speaker's intentions. But a notion of communicative intentions where a speaker is responsible for the intentions her audience ascribes her possible. Under this notion, since so-called non-communicative colourings trigger specific inferences, a speaker who uses them communicates these inferences. Therefore, I vindicate the communicative role of colourings with content.

Author's Profile

Lwenn Bussière-Caraes
University of Amsterdam

Analytics

Added to PP
2022-09-05

Downloads
144 (#75,466)

6 months
67 (#56,900)

Historical graph of downloads since first upload
This graph includes both downloads from PhilArchive and clicks on external links on PhilPapers.
How can I increase my downloads?