This is the foundational problem of linguistic meaning, sometimes called the metasemantic problem: what about speakers and their practices gives an expression its particular meaning? Meaning as use answers by grounding the meaning of many expressions in their role within a language. This is distinct from asking which sentences are meaningful at all.
Philosophy of Language
The Grounds of Linguistic Meaning
What facts make a linguistic expression have the meaning that it has?
Positions
- Causal-Historical Reference
A term refers to what it does because of a causal chain running back to an initial naming, not because speakers associate a description that the referent satisfies.
On what gives words meaning: the account covers names and natural-kind terms and explains how they refer, not meaning in general; it stands here as the causal-historical alternative to description theories of how such terms attach to the world.
- Description Theory of Names
A proper name refers to whatever uniquely fits the descriptions its speakers associate with it, so the name works as shorthand for a description.
On what gives words meaning: the account covers proper names, not meaning in general, and grounds what a name picks out in the descriptive content its speakers associate with it.
- Meaning as Use
For a large class of expressions, meaning is their use in the language.
Held by Ordinary Language Philosophy
- Speaker-Meaning
An expression means what it does because of what speakers intend to communicate by it, so meaning in a language is built out of the intentions behind particular utterances.
Methods used to investigate this question
- Ordinary-Language Analysis
Ordinary-language analysis examines how expressions work in everyday contexts to diagnose philosophical confusion and clarify the concepts at issue.
- Structural Analysis
Structural analysis explains an element through the system of differences, relations, and rules that makes it intelligible.