ABSTRACT
Whilst realism has come under attack from the social constructionists of both modern and postmodern types, the realist response has been to defend a world 'out there'. This chapter looks at some difficulties faced by social constructionist positions in establishing a coherent account of discursivity. It suggests how these difficulties might be remedied via recognition of a constitutive ambiguity in the structure of a referring discourse. This decisive point is illustrated by means of Dummett's truth conditional semantics, which can serve as a theoretical expression of the alternative account of discursivity, because it distinguishes and theorises a relationship between formal, propositional aspects of discourse on the one hand, and its situatedness in underlying 'everyday' contextual factors of communication, on the other. It recognises that theoretical knowledge is inflected or situated by the manner in which it is arrived at. It is at once both knowledge and discursive practice.
