The departure from t literal meaning is therefore predetermined by t literal meaning. Crary is interested in the concept of literal meaning because it seems to encode the abstraction requirement. Francois recanati argues for the relevance of this controversy to the current debate about semantics and pragmatics. In recanati s literal meaning, metaphor involves loosening,1 and in recanati s 1993 and 1995 metaphor is concerned with transfer. The alleged priority of literal interpretation recanati. While some theories suggest that the processor always starts from the literal meaning indirect access account, others. Recanati is particularly impressed by two pervasive facts about everyday communication. Contemporary linguistic philosophers distinguish between three types of meaning. The first is literal meaning acquired through grammar rules and conventional lexical meanings of words, the subject matter of the modern field of semantics and labelled by paul grice as conventional meaning. Alice crary has recently developed a radical reading of j. Literal meaning has been a concept at the heart of english literacy for almost as.
Instead he presents a compelling case for the contextualist side of the debate. Literal meaning 1 most philosophers and linguists accept a certain conception of the notion of the literal meaning of words and sentences and the relation between literal meaning and other semantic notions such as ambiguity, metaphor, and truth. He has published many papers and several books on the philosophy of language and mind, including meaning and force cambridge, 1988, direct reference 1993, and. Dec 04, 2020 this is a debate that has been going on in the philosophy of language for the last fifteen years, in particular since the publication of francois recanati s influential book literal meaning. Recanati provides an original and insightful defence of contextualism, and offers an informed survey of the spectrum of positions held by linguists and philosophers working at the semanticspragmatics interface. Whenever that is so, i say that the departure is minimal.
The position defended in this paper is that the semanticspragmatics distinction holds between contextinvariant encoded linguistic meaning and speaker meaning. Semantic scholar extracted view of 1 literal meaning by f. A salient meaning is a meaning that is psychologically salient irrespective of. Schumacher, the role of literal meaning in figurative language comprehension. Recanati is particularly impressed by two pervasive facts. The coded meaning of a sentence, for instance, is derived from instantiating conventional lexical meanings in the manner cued by its grammatical structure. This view contrasts with that held by ordinary language philosophers fifty.
Sorry, we are unable to provide the full text but you may find it at the following locations. What literal meaning is about literal meaning is devoted to a foundational debate in the philosophy of language. This is a debate that has been going on in the philosophy of language for the last fifteen years, in particular since the publication of francois recanati s influential book literal meaning. Predelli and carpintero on literal meaning francois recanati institut jeannicod, paris 1. Cases in which the alleged non literal meaning can be accessed directly are cases where the non literal meaning has become conventionalized. Request pdf on jul 1, 2006, majbritt mosegaard hansen published literal meaning find, read and cite all the research you need on researchgate. Without some notion of literal meaning it is unclear what it would mean for anyone to mean what they say, or how anyone else could ever understand them. Literal meaning integrates his extensive earlier work into a systematic challenge to the very idea of literal meaning, at least as traditionally conceived, and the result is a vigorous manifesto for semantic contextualism. Recanati says that literalism is the dominant position in theorizing about the relation between semantics and pragmatics. Francois recanati provides an original defense of contextualism in contr. The homeric debate between advocates of some kind of formal semantics and advocates of some kind of usebased semantics. When the meaning of an utterance only minimally departs from t literal meaning, that meaning.
A view of novel metaphor in the light of recanatis proposals. The semantic content of a sentence relative to a context is the result of combining the referential contents of the parts of that sentence, relative to that context, in accord with the composition rules determined by the. In this paper i want to challenge one aspect of this received opinion. See borg 2004, recanati 2004, and stojanovic 2006 for discussion. Francois recanati, literal meaning san francisco state university. Download literal meaning books, this is a provocative contribution to the current debate about the best delimitation of semantics and pragmatics. Isbn 0 521 79246 0 hardback isbn 0 521 53736 3 paperback 1. The role of literal meaning in figurative language.
In literal meaning 2004, francois recanati clearly and helpfully articulates reasons that he has been propounding in the past two decades for adopting one of the two main contrasting positions in this debate, which he labels contextualism and literalism the book helpfully distinguishes importantly different versions of the two. Literal meaning hardback by francois recanati and a great selection of related books, art and collectibles available now at. According to the dominant position among philosophers of language today, we can legitimately ascribe determinate contents such as truthconditions to natural language sentences, independently of what the speaker actually means. He also describes his own position in the debate, and de1f. Is what is said determined by linguistic conventions, or is it an aspect of speakers meaning. Contextualists hold that contexts of utterance, and specifically speaker intentions, provide an ineliminable and thoroughgoing contribution to literal meaning. He has published many papers and several books on the philosophy of language and mind, including meaning and force cambridge, 1988, direct reference 1993, and oratio obliqua, oratio recta 2000. The central contention of crarys reading is that austin gives. Liburu garrantzitsua da edozein modutan frren literal meaning hau. The notions of literal and non literal meaning in semantics and 5 varieties of meaning.
Literal meaning 1st edition 9780521792462, 9780511060984. But this argument is not conclusive for recanati because the asymmetric dependence that non literal meaning has on. In this book, recanati gives an overview of what positions there are regarding the above question. Linguistic communication and the semanticspragmatics. Jun 05, 2007 most people working on linguistic meaning or communication assume that semantics and pragmatics are distinct domains, yet there is still little consensus on how the distinction is to be drawn. We use literal meaning in the sense that it is the meaning of a word stored in. Recanati, literal meaning, cambridge university press, 2004. In this paper, we are going to side with recanati s 1993 and 1995 to argue that novel metaphor is a case of transfer, although we are not going to belittle some correct intuitions included in the idea that. The sixth chapter of literal meaning is devoted to setting up recanati s arguments against the thesis he calls indexicalism.
Scribd is the worlds largest social reading and publishing site. In literal meaning 2004, franpois recanati clearly and helpfully articulates reasons that he has been propounding in the past two decades for adopting one of the two main contrasting positions in this debate, which he labels contextualism and literalism the book helpfully distinguishes importantly different versions of the two. Literal meaning by francois recanati, franois recanati. To what extent is semantic composition a creative process. Save up to 80% by choosing the etextbook option for isbn. In his most recent work to our knowledge literal meaning, francois recanati wrote. Recanati 1995 for instance argue for literal meaning to play only a local role. Literal meaning 1st edition by francois recanati and publisher cambridge university press. Recanati, with 200 highly influential citations and 279 scientific research papers. Review francois recanati, literal meaning, cambridge.
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