Language as Argument

Abstract

In this chapter I shall endorse the claim that language use, largely and perhaps in its entirety, is argument. Building on the points made in the previous chapters, I shall assert that to say things is, almost always, to mean other things too: and those other things can only be understood through a process of making inferences based on the premises of what one has heard and what one already knows. Speakers know that their words will be taken and used in this way to construct meanings beyond what has actually been uttered, they expect it.