Introduction

This chapter introduces the popular conception of language as cooperative information exchange, which has generated the theoretical idealizations that will be critiqued throughout the book. It describes the function and success conditions of these idealizations, and discusses ways that idealizations can go wrong. The chapter provides an overview of the book: Part I looks at the ways in which the idealized conception of language as cooperative information exchange shows up at the foundational level of the philosophy of language, particularly in the work of Paul Grice, David Lewis, and Robert Stalnaker. Part II provides a sketch of a non-ideal foundational theory of language, and then develop its details by contrasting it with the work of Grice, Lewis, and Stalnaker. The positive proposal conceives of linguistic communication as a complex social affair characterized by a multiplicity of goals and interests. Though linguistic communication serves many different functions, it is argued that one in particular plays a primary explanatory role: this is the goal of attention-direction.