On Inquiries into Metalinguistic Negotiations

Abstract

In recent years, David Plunkett and Tim Sundell have developed views on metalinguistic negotiations. A metalinguistic negotiation is a dispute where both parties use (rather than mention) a term to express a view about what the term should mean. Plunkett, Sundell, and others have presented philosophical views with the assumption that there are metalinguistic negotiations. For example, they consider that some (or many) philosophical disputes are metalinguistic negotiations and that contextualists about predicates of personal taste can defend their view by invoking the notion of metalinguistic negotiations. Moreover, the linguistic mechanism of metalinguistic usages is tried to explain by dynamic semantics and Gricean pragmatics.