Abstract
The pursuit of ‘meaning’ among the great minds of oriental and occidental worlds has never stopped. Among them, Grice’s (1975) seminal distinction between ‘what-is-said’ (WIS) and ‘what-is-implicated’ gives birth to issues that have become the themes of neo-Gricean/post-Gricean pragmatic studies of meaning, for example, semantics-pragmatics distinction (the ‘border-war’), Grice’s circle, and so on.
Michael Devitt is a distinguished professor of philosophy at the City University of New York, well known for many influential works on topics concerning the border-war, for example, intuition-based analysis of meaning, semantic externalism, and so on. His latest book Overlooking Conventions: The Trouble with Linguistic Pragmatism (henceforth Overlooking Conventions) exhibits his recent reflections on the division of labor between semantics (conventions) and pragmatics (inferences).
I begin with a rough overview of the chapters.
Chapter 1 is an introduction to the background of the border-war and states Devitt’s own aims in writing this book.
In Chapter 2, Devitt argues against the methodology of consulting intuitions about truth of language: we do not have ‘a prior knowledge’ of meanings; nor should we prefer folk intuitions to expert ones – we should seek evidence from direct linguistic usage.
Chapter 3 focuses on the debate on semantics-pragmatics distinction, in which Devitt distinguishes between the representational properties of an utterance arising from the communicators’ use of the linguistic system and others that constitute what is meant by the speakers.
Chapter 4 lays emphasis on the relation between intentions and speaker meaning. Devitt believes that the fundamental act of speaker meaning is expressing a thought intentionally, which applies to linguistic acts such as writing. He also argues that there are neither constitutive nor normative constraints on speakers’ intentions.
Chapter 5 analyzes the importance of linguistic conventions in linguistic studies. In Devitt’s view, conventions are important because they explain why a linguistic term has its meaning in view of the fact that people tend to associate an expression with a certain meaning because other members of their linguistic community do just the same.
Chapter 6 compares various versions of WIS. Bach’s (1994, 2001) notion is semantically complete, expressing a ‘propositional radical’ and excluding meaning aspects such as reference fixing of indexicals. Neale’s (2005, 2016) concept rests on a distinction between type-meaning and token-meaning, the former being the subject of compositional semantics. In contrast, Devitt’s theory is committed to the latter, the basis from which the former abstracts.
Chapter 7 concerns an unnoticed confusion of two studies, one involving meanings of utterances and the other the interpretive process of utterance comprehension. Devitt claims that it is because of this overlooked confusion that leads many scholars to adopt a pragmatics-based approach toward meaning constitution.
Chapter 8 discusses two strategies of dealing with derivated meanings of expressions: Grice’s (1975) Modified Occam’s Razor and Bach’s (1995) Standardization. Devitt argues that whereas the former cannot cope with metaphors as it would make them immortal, neither can the latter work since it is based on Bach’s unjustified distinction between conventionalization and standardization, thus concluding that if the two strategies do not work, it seems that the pragmatics-based approach is doomed to fail.
Chapter 9 is a case study on the referential use of definite descriptions. Making use of the fact that we regularly use definite descriptions referentially, Devitt argues that appealing to the semantic convention can settle the dispute – there is no need turning to pragmatics.
Chapter 10 explores a saturation-based method of explaining a range of phenomena believed by many to be a result of pragmatic modulation. According to Devitt, the underlying logic forms of the linguistic expressions in question have an implicit slot waiting to be filled, which is semantics-oriented.
Chapter 11 discusses polysemy. Devitt offers various objections to a pragmatic analysis and defends a semantic approach: polysemous expressions regularly select one of their linguistic meaning in specific contexts and contribute that sense to the propositional content of the sentence uttered.
Chapter 12 focuses on sub-sententials. While arguing for a semantics-oriented approach to the effect that it is a truth-conditional semantic proposition that a sub-sentential has been used to assert, the author also suggests that the content expressed by novel sub-sentential utterances partly result from pragmatics, that is, only in special cases should we appeal to pragmatics.
In general, Overlooking Conventions is of great theoretical value as it delves into various interrelated aspects crucial to the ‘border-war’, ranging from non-/reliance on intuitions, speakers’ intentions, linguistic conventions to characterizations and properties of WIS. These concepts are just the theoretical and methodological bases on which pragmatists build their edifice (Carston, 2017; Recanati, 2010); by refuting them in turn, Devitt reiterates his stance that many phenomena reckoned as pragmatic should be accommodated within a semantics-oriented framework. As there is a (perhaps notorious) tendency to appeal to pragmatics every time a linguistic phenomenon is encountered, Devitt’s discussions help us recognize the importance of semantic conventions in linguistic studies, which sheds lights on discourse analysis.
In discussing each topic, Devitt begins with presenting how pragmatists have dealt with it and then offers his novel analyses accordingly. This form of writing exhibits the logical clarity of the book and ensures that readers can grasp the gist of Devitt and his opponents. On the other hand, as there are yet no final answers to these hotly debated topics, in reading relevant chapters, readers can hopefully capture the research status and have an understanding of the research frontiers, find their academic interests and further their own studies.
However, Overlooking Conventions also has shortcomings, which may best be embodied by some controversies it incurs. In Chapter 11, Devitt argues that polysemy should typically be treated as semantic ambiguity. In fact, the (over-)use of ambiguity in linguistic studies has been severely criticized by many scholars (e.g., Benzuidenhout, 2015; Szabo, 2015), the most representative being Kripke who claims that it is ‘lazy man’s approach in philosophy to posit ambiguities when in trouble’ (Kripke, 1977: 268).
Despite some minor imperfections, the comprehensiveness of the topics covered by and the depth of the discussions offered in Overlooking Conventions are the splendor that make it a book worthy of being recommended to researchers interested in the border-war and related issues.