Inferentialism, Context-Shifting and Background Assumptions

Abstract

In this paper I present how the normative inferentialist can make the distinction between sentence meaning and content of the utterance. The inferentialist can understand sentence meaning as a role conferred to that sentence by the rules governing inferential transitions and content of the utterance as just a part of sentence meaning. I attempt to show how such a framework can account for prominent scenarios presented by contextualists as a challenge to semantic minimalism/literalism. I argue that inferentialism can address contextualist challenges in a simple and effective manner by understanding sentence meaning as broad, but invariant.

Inferentialist semantics for lexicalized social meanings

“…18 It could be objected that it is too broad to be of analytical value, but I should emphasize that it is not intended as an explanatory concept as such-it is the more nuanced aspects of discursive significance discussed below that will be important for analyzing lexicalized social meaning. For this reason I also do not use the term "inferential significance" introduced for what I take to be the same concept by Drobňák (2020) and Kaluziński (2020), who employ it to distinguish and analyze sentence meaning and utterance meaning. This is not relevant to my purposes here, but a reader who wishes to know how discursive/inferential significance can be spelled out in more detail is referred to their work.…”