The proposition expressed by a sentence is relative to a context. But what determines the content of the context? Many theorists
would include among these determinants aspects of the speaker’s intention in speaking. My thesis is that, on the contrary,
the determinants of the context never include the speaker’s intention. My argument for this thesis turns on a consideration
of the role that the concept of
proposition expressed in context is supposed to play in a theory of linguistic communication. To illustrate an alternative approach, I present an original
theory of the reference of demonstratives according to which the referent of a demonstrative is the object that adequately
and best satisfies certain
accessibility criteria. Although I call my thesis zero tolerance for pragmatics, it is not an expression of intolerance for everything that might
be called “pragmatics.”
Keywords Semantics - Pragmatics - Speaker Intentions - Demonstratives - Normativity