International symposium
Cognition and Interpretation

Institute of philosophy,
Zagreb, October 10-11, 2003

Timothy Williamson (Oxford)
Inference, Reference and the Semantics of Pejoratives

Pejoratives are expressions with a negative connotation. Following Michael Dummett, inferentialists such as Robert Brandom have cited them as examples of incoherence in the inferential rules governing the use of an expression (technically, of lack of harmony between their introduction and elimination rules). I will argue that this analysis confuses rules of quite different kinds and issues in implausible claims about the conditions for understanding pejoratives and about their reference. In its place, I will defend a Fregean analysis based on a distinction between sense (truth-conditional meaning) and tone, further developed by appeal to Grice’s notion of conventional implicature. I will suggest some more general morals concerning the relationship between understanding and use and between thought and language.