ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines Stalnaker’s formal pragmatic framework and identifies five interrelated idealizations that flow from his conception of language as a mechanism for cooperative information exchange: 1) Conversations are taken to have a unique goal; 2) This goal is taken to be shared: 3) All speech acts are taken to be aimed at updating, and as being interpreted against a unique information set; 4) This information set is characterized in terms of shared mental states; 5) This information set is characterized using a unique and coarse-grained type of mental state. The chapter argues that these idealizations prevent the Stalnakerian framework from providing an explanatory representation of various linguistic phenomena, including non-literal speech, non-serious speech, deception, dogwhistles, and miscommunication. It consider various proposals for modifying the traditional Stalnakerian framework, arguing that they fail to address these worries.
