Imagination and Convention: Distinguishing Grammar and Inference in Language

by Ernie Lepore and Matthew Stone

Book Overview

What do speakers mean? What do they convey? What do they reveal? How do they invite us to think? Communication exploits conventional rules, deliberate choices, and many other faculties. How? A common answer invokes simple meanings and general ways to reinterpret them, as in H. P. Grice's theory of conversational implicature. Lepore and Stone show such answers are unsatisfactory. Instead, they argue that language provides diverse tools for making ideas...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0198717180
• ISBN13: 9780198717188
• Release Date: February 2015
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 1.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.3" x 9.2"