Referential Competence

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter presents the author’s own accounts of speaker meaning and speaker reference. These are informed and influenced by earlier work in the tradition of Gricean intentionalism, especially by Grice, Strawson, Schiffer, Sperber, Wilson, Carston, Neale, and Bach. The chapter argues that speaker meaning ought to include Grice’s so-called third clause, which the author calls the directive intention. The mechanistic perspective assumed here gives reason to distinguish natural and nonnatural meaning, as understood by Grice, from what the author calls unnatural meaning. Unnatural meaning occurs when two distinct mechanisms, in this case the mechanism for natural meaning and the mechanism for nonnatural meaning, are unnaturally mixed in a single speech act. Speaker reference is defined directly in terms of speaker meaning, as a speech act whereby one means a singular proposition and intends the addressee to take a particular part of the utterance as direct evidence for a referential intention. This is the mature end-state of referential competence, involving the use of natural language expressions, rather than other possible means of communication. A few intuitive objections are addressed and the author tries to clarify the major concepts employed in this account of reference.