Emma Borg

University of Reading, UK

“Linguistic Meaning, Context and Assertion”

This paper explores the impact of contextual features on linguistic communication. In particular I’m interested in the difference between asserting and implying, and the question of the role the context of utterance plays in determining either kind of content. I begin by introducing two distinct approaches to the difference between asserting and implying: one which locates the difference in the language, as it were, and one which locates it in the mind. However I argue that both these approaches face problems. Instead then I argue that the distinction is better captured in sociolinguistic terms, whereby the difference between asserting and merely implying emerges from the distinct kinds of social role these speech acts play and the kinds of culpability or responsibility a community assigns to a speaker for a conveyed content. I conclude by sketching how this socially-orientated view of assertion relates to certain philosophical analyses of assertion and how the view might impact on our understanding of more applied issues in philosophy of language, such as informed consent and libel or slander.