| How do people understand each other? In the philosophy of language there are two approaches to this question. Semantics studies how the application of definitions of words and the rules of grammar are used to obtain a proposition from an utterance. Pragmatics observes the effects of the context in which an utterance is made upon what it signifies on that particular occasion.; One task for philosophers of language is to explain how these two distinct fields may be reconciled into a single account of understanding. The traditional view holds that understanding progresses through two stages, the first semantic and the second pragmatic.; This paper challenges that traditional account of understanding. After investigating the work of Grice, Carston, Recanati, Stalnaker, and Travis, I propose a new approach that includes both semantic and pragmatic effort while rejecting the linear nature of the traditional view. |
