What is Said and Indirect Speech Reports

Joanna Odrowąż-Sypniewska

doi:10.2478/v10015-011-0026-9

Authors

Joanna Odrowąż-Sypniewska University of Warsaw

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.2478/v10015-011-0026-9

Abstract

In their Insensitive Semantics (2005) Cappelen and Lepore argue for the Controversial Aspect (CA) which is a part of their Speech Act Pluralism and which says that speakers don’t have privileged access to what they say. Gross (2006) criticizes C&L’s argument for CA and urges them to abandon that claim. I argue that on C&L’s broad understanding of the notion of what is said, CA (and whole SAP) is trivial, whereas on a more restricted understanding CA is indeed controversial and plausibly false. Moreover, the broad reading of what is said is incompatible with one of C&L’s tests for context-sensitivity.

Author Biography

Joanna Odrowąż-Sypniewska, University of Warsaw

Joanna Odrowąż-Sypniewska is Associate Professor at the Institute of Philosophy, University of Warsaw. She did her Ph.D. at the University of Warsaw (1999) and at St Andrews University (2001). She works on philosophy of language and metaphysics. She is particularly interested in vagueness, natural kind terms and the minimalism-contextualism debate. She published two books (in Polish) and many papers (both in Polish and in English).

References

Cappelen, Herman and Ernie Lepore. 2005. Insensitive Semantics. A Defense of Semantic Minimalism and Speech Act Pluralism, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Cappelen, Herman and Ernie Lepore. 1997. “On an Alleged Connection Between Indirect Speech and the Theory of Meaning”. Mind and Language 12, 278-296. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0017.1997.tb00075.x

Cappelen, Herman and Ernie Lepore. (2006). “Response”. Mind and Language 21, 50-73.

Gross, Steven. 2006 “Can One Sincerely Say What One Doesn’t Believe?”, Mind and Language 21, 11-20. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0017.2006.00302.x

Kaplan, David. 1989. “Demonstratives”. In J. Almog, J. Perry, H. Wettstein (eds.), Themes form Kaplan. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lepore, Ernie. 2004. “An Abuse of Context in Semantics: The Case of Incomplete Definite Descriptions”. In M. Reimer and A. Bezuidenhout (eds.), Descriptions and Beyond (41-67). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Odrowąż-Sypniewska, Joanna. 2010. “Sprawozdania w mowie zależnej”, Przegląd Filozoficzny - Nowa Seria 3, 263-276.