PAPERS

(forth.) Distorted Debates. Topoi. [link open access]

One way to silence the powerless, Langton has taught us, is to pre-emptively disable their ability to do things with words. In this paper I argue that speakers can be silenced in a different way. You can let them speak, and obscure the meaning of their words afterwards. My aim is to investigate this form of silencing, that I call retroactive distortion. In a retroactive distortion, the meaning of the words of a speaker is distorted by the effect of a subsequent speech act by a different speaker. After introducing this notion, I explore some reasons why retroactive distortions can be difficult to challenge and argue that, besides constituting a communicative injustice, they can eliminate topics from public consideration and therefore erode public debate.

Keywords: Retroactive distortion, silencing, hermeneutical injustice, propaganda.

(forth.) Metaphor and Contextual Coherence: It's a match!. Inquiry. With I. Crespo and A. Heise [link] [PDF]

Many sentences can be interpreted both as a metaphor and as a literal claim, depending on the context. The aim of this paper is to show that there are discourse-based systematic constraints on the identification of an utterance as metaphorical, literal, or both (as in the case of twice-apt metaphors), from a normative point of view. We claim that the key is contextual coherence. In order to substantiate this claim, we introduce a novel notion of context as a rich and heterogeneous body of information, including previous discourse, elements coming from the surroundings of the utterance, background information, and Questions Under Discussion (QUD) issued from these three sources. We then define contextual coherence as a relation between what we call the minimal paraphrase of the metaphor and the context, and argue that for an interpretation to be coherent two conditions must be met. First, the minimal paraphrase must address some question in the QUD stack. Second, it must be externally consistent, i.e., consistent with the available contextual information. Finally, we argue that an approach based on contextual coherence is better suited to deal with twice-true and twice-apt metaphors than traditional approaches based on semantic deviance or pragmatic lack of fit.

Keywords: twice-true metaphor, twice-apt metaphor, coherence, Questions Under Discussion, context, interpretation.

(2022) Metaphor Identification Beyond Discourse Coherence. Argumenta (15) 109-124. With I. Crespo and A. Heise [link open access]

In this paper, we propose an account of metaphor identification on the basis of contextual coherence. In doing so, we build on previous work by Nicholas Asher and Alex Lascarides that appeals to rhetorical relations in order to explain discourse structure and the constraints on the interpretation of metaphor that follow from it. Applying this general idea to our problem, we will show that rhetorical relations are sometimes insufficient and sometimes inadequate for deciding whether a given utterance is a case of metaphor. They are insufficient, since rhetorical relations fall short at times of providing a basis for disambiguating between literal and metaphorical interpretations. In such cases, contextual information other than previous discourse needs to enter the picture. To this effect, we bring the idea of external consistency into play. Beyond that, though, we will argue that rhetorical relations are sometimes inadequate to account for coherence, if conceived as relations among sentences only. The reason is that extra-linguistic elements of the situation in which the sentence is uttered may be crucial for getting at the preferred interpretation. To account for these cases, we allow rhetorical relations to connect both with previous discourse and with extra-linguistic situations. In our final refinement of the notion of contextual coherence, we forfeit any appeal to rhetorical relations in favour of Questions Under Discussion (QUD). We defend the view that this account does not only explain the same sort of cases. What is more, it solves the issue of metaphor identification in impoverished contexts.

Keywords: Metaphor identification, Context, Coherence, Rhetorical relations, Questions under discussion (QUD).

(2022) Homophonic reports and gradual communication. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly. [link open access]

Pragmatic modulation makes contextual information necessary for interpretation. This poses a problem for homophonic reports and inter-contextual communication in general: of co-situated interlocutors, we can expect some common ground, but non-co-situated interpreters lack access to the context of utterance. Here I argue that we can nonetheless share modulated contents via homophonic reports. First, occasion-unspecific information is often sufficient for the recovery of modulated content. Second, interpreters can recover what is said with different degrees of accuracy. Homophonic reports and inter-contextual communication are often successful because the reporting context does not demand full accuracy.

(2022) Are utterance truth-conditions systematically determined? Inquiry. [link] [PDF]

Truth-conditions are systematically determined when they are the output of an algorithmic procedure that takes as input a set of semantic and (optionally) contextual features. Truth-conditional sceptics have cast doubts on the thesis that truth-conditions are systematic in this sense. Against this form of scepticism, Schoubye and Stokke (2016) and Dobler (2019) have provided systematic analyses of utterance truth-conditions. My aim is to argue that these theories are not immune to the kind of objections raised by truth-conditional sceptics. In particular, I argue that the use of Questions Under Discussion (Schoubye and Stokke) and ways of being (Dobler) is problematic.

Keywords: underdeterminacy, truth-conditional scepticism, utterance truth-conditions, QUD, ways of being, semantics, modulation.

(2021) Not all speakers are equal. Harm and conversational standing. Daimon. [link open access]

McGowan has provided a linguistic mechanism that explains how speech can constitute harm. Her idea is that utterances routinely enact s-norms about what is permissible in a given context. My aim is to argue that these s-norms are sensitive to the conversational standing of the speaker. In particular, I claim that the strength of the norm enacted depends on the standing of the speaker. In some cases, the speaker might even lack the standing required to enact new s-norms.

Keywords: hate speech, conversational exercitive, conversational standing, silencing, discursive injustice, sexism.

(2019) Are mental representations underdeterminacy-free? Synthese, 196:633–654. [link] [PDF]

According to some views (Carston, Fodor), natural language suffers from underdeterminacy, but thought doesn’t. According to the underdeterminacy claim, sentence types underdetermine the truth-conditions of sentence tokens. In particular, the semantics of a predicate type seems to underdetermine the satisfaction conditions of its tokens. By contrast, mental representation-types are supposed to determine the truth-conditions of its tokens. In this paper I critically examine these mixed views. First, I argue that the arguments supporting the indispensability of including in one’s theory mental representations that are free of the underdeterminacy exhibited by natural language are not sound. As a result, the possibility that mental representation-types are as underdetermined as natural language sentence-types has not been ruled out. Second, I argue that Carston’s ad hoc concept-types are as underdetermined as word-types. I finish by arguing that mental representations are also underdetermined in a second sense—mental representation-tokens only determine a partial function from possible worlds to truth-values.

(2017) Utterance content, speaker’s intentions and linguistic liability. Theoria, Vol 32, No 3, pp. 329-345. DOI: 10.1387/theoria.16720 [link open access]

According to contextualists, communication has to do with pragmatically adjusted content, not with conventional meaning. This pragmatic content is sometimes identified with speaker meaning or with the thought the speaker intends to express. I will argue that given the sociolinguistic role of utterance content—the fact it provides reasons for action, liabilities and entitlements locutionary content should not be modelled as a variety of speaker meaning.

Keywords: what is said, utterance content, accountability, linguistic liability, speaker meaning.

(2016) La inefabilidad en el lenguaje natural. Quaderns de filosofia, Vol. 3, 59-79. DOI: 10.7203/qfia.3.1.8279 [link open access]

Los casos de variación en las condiciones de satisfacción de enunciados sin deícticos, junto con la asunción de un principio de proposicionalidad, han llevado a filósofos como Carston a defender la idea de que nuestros pensamientos son inefables, esto es, no codificables en lenguaje natural. En contra de este enfoque argumentaré (i) que esta teoría no se aplica al pensamiento consciente, (ii) que, contra el argumento de la desambiguación, el principio de proposicionalidad no es obligatorio y (iii) que podemos explicar tanto los casos exitosos de comunicación como aquellos en los que es necesario que el hablante precise qué quería decir sin recurrir a pensamientos inefables.

Palabras clave: infradeterminación, contextualismo, conceptos ad hoc, efabilidad, Carston, Travis

BOOK CHAPTERS

(2020) Occasion-Sensitivity and What is Said. In T. Ciecierki and P. Grabarczyk (eds.), The Architecture of Context and Context-Sensitivity. Springer [PDF]

Although both contextualism and occasionalism hold an underdeterminacy thesis with respect to natural language, they disagree about whether other structured representational items (such as mental representations or structured propositions) exhibit a similar form of underdeterminacy. In particular, contextualism assumes that the properties or mental representations expressed by a use of a predicate are underdeterminacy-free. I argue that this view faces three worries. On the linguistic side, if there are underdeterminacy-free properties to be had, it is mysterious why we are unable to coin words corresponding to them (i.e., underdeterminacy-free words). On the cognitive side, it remains to be explained how we relate to these non-encodable properties. And on the metaphysical side, it is not clear whether our communicative intentions are precise enough to determine an underdeterminacy-free property.

Keywords: semantic underdeterminacy, contextualism, occasion-sensitivity, truth-conditional pragmatics

(forth.) Lo que se dice y la delimitación entre semántica y pragmática. In I. Vicario (ed.), Filosofía del Lenguaje. Tecnos [PDF]

ENCYCLOPEDIA ENTRIES

(2020). Contexto. “Enciclopedia de la Sociedad Española de Filosofía Analítica. URL: http://www.sefaweb.es/contexto/