Indexicality and Representation

In the vast majority of cases linguistic comprehension does not care much about what there is in the world and what state the world is in. Comprehension is often satisfied with satisfaction: you have understood somebody’s statement once you have set up a model that satisfies the statement. But occasionally reality matters. When Albert confesses to Bob: “I ́m having an affair with your wife”, and Bob ́s comprehension goes no further than constructing a model that satisfies Albert’s statement, i.e. a model in which a speaker is having an affair with his listener ́s wife, then there is nothing that could make Albert nervous or that could make Bob jalous. Merely constructing a model does not link the statement to the world. But how do we model this step from a model to real life, from “I” or “you” to a real person? A proposal sketched near the end of this paper is that – despite first appearance – we don’t and we needn’t.