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J . L . A ustin and Literal Meaning
Author(s) -
Hansen Nat
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
european journal of philosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.42
H-Index - 36
eISSN - 1468-0378
pISSN - 0966-8373
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0378.2011.00510.x
Subject(s) - sentence , meaning (existential) , reading (process) , literal (mathematical logic) , linguistics , literal and figurative language , context (archaeology) , psychology , philosophy , epistemology , history , archaeology
A lice C rary has recently developed a radical reading of J . L . A ustin's philosophy of language. The central contention of C rary's reading is that A ustin gives convincing reasons to reject the idea that sentences have context‐invariant literal meaning. While I am in sympathy with C rary about the continuing importance of A ustin's work, and I think C rary's reading is deep and interesting, I do not think literal sentence meaning is one of A ustin's targets, and the arguments that C rary attributes to A ustin or finds A ustinian in spirit do not provide convincing reasons to reject literal sentence meaning. In this paper, I challenge C rary's reading of A ustin and defend the idea of literal sentence meaning.