Victor Tamburini

According to semantic intentionalism, the content of a context-sensitive expression is at least partly determined by an intention of the speaker about this very content - a semantic intention. This article first argues that we have been given no independent reason to think that speakers have certain crucial semantic intentions, despite recent efforts in the literature. This article further argues that a key motivation for preferring semantic intentionalism to communicative intentionalism - a form of intentionalism that regards audience-directed intentions as determinative - can be accepted while endorsing a particular brand of communicative intentionalism. According to this brand, communicative intentions are structured, and one component in the structure determines the content of context-sensitive expressions.

In some cases of communication, the hearer misunderstands the referential part of the speaker's utterance although she identifies the speaker's referent. What more is needed for referential understanding? One view is that the hearer must know what the speaker refers to. Against this view, this article argues that knowledge of reference is not necessary for referential understanding, because of differences between understanding and knowledge in the tolerance of luck. Whereas both referential understanding and knowledge are incompatible with one type of luck—intervening luck—referential understanding is less sensitive than knowledge to another type of luck—environmental luck.

According to a family of metasemantics for demonstratives called intentionalism, the intentions of speakers determine the reference of demonstratives. And according to a sub-family I call proximal intentions (PI) intentionalism, the intention that determines reference is one that occupies a certain place—the proximal one—in a structure of intentions. PI intentionalism is thought to make correct predictions about reference where less sophisticated forms of intentionalism make the wrong predictions. In this article I argue that this is an illusion: PI intentionalism also suffers from predictive inadequacy. In Sect. 1, I present the problem of predictive inadequacy for intentionalism and an ad hoc response to it. In Sect. 2, I sketch a version of PI intentionalism that aims to provide the most principled response to this problem. In Sect. 3, I explain why PI intentionalism cannot solve the problem after all. In Sect. 4, I indicate where I think metasemanticists should go next.

I defend an alternative theory of conversational implicatures that does without Grice's notion of making‐as‐if‐to‐say. This theory characterises conversationally implicating that p as a way to mean that p by saying that q or by saying nothing. Cases that Grice's theory cannot capture are captured, and cases that Grice's theory misdescribes are correctly described. A distinction between conversational implicatures and pragmatic inferences from what speakers express is required, as well as a non‐implicature treatment of figurative speech.