1 - Reference and Meaning

Summary

Chapter 1 introduces the key aims and objectives for the volume in terms of three main research questions. What motivates a speaker to use one expression rather than another in a particular discourse context? How do the components of a referring expression contribute to communication of the speaker’s meaning? In other words, what do referring expressions encode, and how does this interact with the context? What, beyond reference resolution, do referring expressions contribute to the overall speaker’s meaning, and how? The chapter then provides a brief overview of the main concerns of philosophical and stylistic approaches to reference, making links with the pragmatic approach adopted in this volume. Finally, an overview of the rest of the book is provided.