Speaker’s reference, semantic reference and public reference

Keywords: Kripke, misdescription cases, descriptions

Abstract

Kripke (1977) views Donnellan’s (1966) misdescription cases as cases where semantic reference and speaker’s reference come apart. Such cases, however, are also cases where semantic reference conflicts with a distinct species of reference I call “public reference”, i.e. the object that the cues publicly available at the time of utterance indicate is the speaker’s referent of the utterance. This raises the question: do the misdescription cases trade on the distinction between semantic reference and speaker’s reference, or the distinction between semantic reference and public reference? I argue that Kripke’s own construal in terms of semantic reference and speaker’s reference is at best incomplete, and probably wrong. I also explain the general importance of the notion of ‘public reference’.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.
Published
2018-12-21
How to Cite
Smit, J. (2018). Speaker’s reference, semantic reference and public reference. Stellenbosch Papers in Linguistics Plus, 55, 133-143. https://doi.org/10.5842/55-0-777
Section
Articles