Domains of Discourse and the Semantics of Ambiguous Utterances: A Reply to Gauker

In a number of recent publications, including a paper in Mind (Gauker 1997), Christopher Gauker has chosen a powerful target which he calls the expressive theory of communication and which he characterizes as “... any conception of language according to which the primary function of language is to enable speakers to convey propositions to hearers” (Gauker 1997, p. 5). There and elsewhere (Gauker 1992, 1994b), Gauker has argued that the expressive theory lies at the heart of most theorizing about language and communication, including such diverse authors as Locke, Fodor, Davidson, Jackendoff, Grice, Searle, and Sperber and Wilson (see Gauker 1992, 1997 for references). Gauker’s strategy against the expressive theory is to present several thought experiments that involve linguistic communication and then to argue that some of these cannot be understood along the lines of the expressive theory. The central thought experiment is a case of miscommunication.