Table Of ContentContext
CONTEXTANDCONTENT
Serieseditor:FrançoisRecanati,InstitutNicod
Othertitlesintheseries:
TheInessentialIndexical
OnthePhilosophicalInsignificanceofPerspectiveandtheFirstPerson
HermanCappelenandJoshDever
TheMirroroftheWorld
Subjects,Consciousness,andSelf-Consciousness
ChristopherPeacocke
AssessmentSensitivity
RelativeTruthanditsApplications
JohnMacFarlane
Context
Robert Stalnaker
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3
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Contents
Preface vii
Introduction 1
1. ThreeNotionsofContext 13
2. CommonGroundandKeepingScore 35
3. PresuppositionRequirements 54
4. ContextandCompositionality 78
5. TheEssentialContextual 108
6. May,Might,If 126
7. DisagreementandProjection 161
8. ContextualismandtheNewRelativism 189
Appendix 208
References 237
Index 245
Preface
This book had its roots in work begun more than forty years ago on
presupposition and assertion, and I have been tinkering with the ideas
Isketchedthen,offandon,eversince.Iamgratefulfortheopportunity
provided byFrançoisRecanatito further developthese ideas in asetof
lecturesinhisContentandContextseries.Ibenefitedfromstimulating
discussion at those lectures from, among others, Herb Clark, Kathrin
Glüer-Pagin, Peter Pagin, François Recanati, and Isadora Stojanovic.
These four lectures, given in Paris in 2010, grew to six when I gavethe
GaoslecturesthenextyearinMexicoCityattheInstitutodeInvestiga-
cionesFilóficasattheUniversidadNacionalAutónomadeMexico.Iam
gratefultothephilosophersoflanguageattheUNAMfortheinvitation
togivetheselectures,andforthestimulatingdiscussionsthatIhadwith
themduringmymonththere.ThanksalsotothephilosophersatBrown
Universitywhereearlierversionsofthreeofthechaptersconstitutedthe
JosiahRoycelectures,giventherein2007.
The 1970s, when I first started thinking about pragmatics, were
exciting times in the philosophy of language, with a lot of fruitful
interactionbetweenphilosophersandlinguists,whowerejustinventing
theoreticalsemanticsandpragmaticsasitispracticedtoday.Amongthe
linguists who helped to draw me into the subject at that time and to
appreciate the relevance of their work to philosophical issues were
Lauri Karttunen, George Lakoff, Barbara Partee, Stan Peters, and Sally
McConnell-Ginet.
Philosophers and linguists tended to go their separate ways in the
decade after the 1970s, but from the early 90s to the present, interdis-
ciplinary work in semantics/pragmatics, and philosophical uses of lin-
guistic results have again flourished. Interdisciplinary work is more
demanding than it was in the 70s, since a lot of sophisticated theory
has been developed since then, and alternativeframeworks haveprolif-
erated.ButIhavehadalotofhelpfromtheworkofmanylinguists,and
from discussion with them, including Angelika Kratzer, Paul Portner,
Craige Roberts, Philippe Schlenker, Mandy Simons, and my MIT col-
leagues,KaivonFintel,DannyFox,IreneHeim,andSabineIatridou.
viii PREFACE
Among philosophers, my debts to Paul Grice, David Kaplan, David
Lewis,JohnPerry,andMarkRichardwillbeevidentfromthediscussion
inthebookoftheirworkandideas.
IandmycolleaguesinphilosophyatMIThavebeenfortunatetohave
a really excellent group of graduate students over the past few decades,
many of whom have made and are making important contributions to
the fast moving interdisciplinary field of pragmatics. Their work, and
discussion with them while they were students and since, have had a
profound, and I hope positive, influence on the ideas that I develop in
this book. This group, going back more than twenty years, includes
Lenny Clapp, Andy Egan, Sarah Moss, Dilip Ninan, Alejandro Pérez
Carballo, Agustín Rayo, Paolo Santorio, Jason Stanley, Eric Swanson,
ZoltanGendlerSzabó,andSethYalcin.
CraigeRobertsreadacompletedraftofthemanuscript,andgaveme
extremely helpful comments that led to major revision and reorganiza-
tion.Theideas developed inChapters6and7werestronglyinfluenced
by Seth Yalcin’s work on epistemic modals, and extensive correspond-
ence and discussion with him about these issues led to significant
corrections and (I hope) improvements. Thanks to both Craige and
Sethfortheirhelp.
A version of Chapter5 was previously published as Stalnaker 2011a.
ThankstoOxfordUniversityPressforpermissiontoincludepartsofthat
paperinthisbook.
Thanks to my editor, Peter Momtchiloff for advice, support, and
patience. Thanks also to Jan Chamier for meticulous copy editing, and
to Jack Marley-Payne for editorial help at the last stage of the process,
includingcompilingtheindex.
Introduction
Thisbookisanexplorationofthecontextsinwhichspeechtakesplace,
of the ways we represent them, and of the roles they play in explaining
theinterpretationanddynamicsofspeech.Inthisintroductoryoverview,
myaimistoprovideasketchofthegenerallineofargumentofthebook,
thenarrative,astheysay.OrperhapsIshouldsaythatmyaimistoset
theargumentofthebookincontext.
The central thesis thatguides theexploration isthat it ispossible and
fruitfultotheorizeaboutthestructureandfunctionofdiscourseindepend-
entlyofspecifictheoryaboutthemechanismsthatlanguagesusetoserve
thosefunctions.This roughstatement ofthethesis(whichIwilldubthe
autonomyofpragmatics)needstoberefinedandqualified,whichIwilltry
todointhecourseofthebook.Iwilldefendthethesismainlybydeveloping
somepragmatictheorythatIhopewillillustrateit,andbyapplyingthat
theorytotheexplanationofarangeofspecificlinguisticphenomena.The
thesisneedsqualificationsincethedatatobeexplainedbysuchatheoryare
always data concerning the uses of particular expressions of particular
languages, and interpreting the data requires making some assumptions
aboutthesemanticsoftheexpressionsinvolved,butthehopeisthatone
cansometimesdefendandapplypurelypragmaticprincipleswhilemaking
only relatively uncontroversial assumptions about the semantics. Even
though the focus will be on pragmatic explanation, the interaction of
contextwithsemanticinterpretationwillbeacentralconcernofthebook.
The thesis of the autonomy of pragmatics is inspired by the work of
PaulGricewhoseprofoundinfluenceonmythinkingaboutalltheissues
Iwilldiscuss willbeclear.Gricewroteatatimewhensemantictheory,
asappliedtonaturallanguage,wasatamuchmoreprimitivelevelthanit
is today, so the issues about the relation between semantics and prag-
maticsatthattimeweresimpler,butIthinkthegeneralGriceanstrategy
