Michael Stöger
University of Vienna
Consider an exchange between two astronomers:
A: “Pluto is a planet.”
B: “No. Pluto is not a planet.”
A and B express a prima facie disagreement. However, since both are experts in their field, we can assume that A and B have common knowledge of the relevant facts concerning Pluto. So, it is implausible that they disagree about those facts. Rather, they disagree about whether ´planet´ is appropriately used to describe an entity with the properties Pluto has. That is, A and B’s exchange is a metalinguistic dispute (Plunkett & Sundell 2013; 2021). In such disputes, speakers employ an expression in competing metalinguistic usages, i.e. they use (not mention) the expression, to express a disagreement about how it is or ought to be used.
Belleri (2017) and Mankowitz (2021) offer implicature-based explanations of metalinguistic disputes, holding that speakers convey the disputed contents as conversational implicatures. I argue that this approach fails if Plunkett & Sundell’s (2013; 2021) theory of metalinguistic disputes is taken at face value. The problem is twofold:
(1) Plunkett & Sundell (2021) maintain that speakers may engage in a metalinguistic dispute without being aware that they are doing so. Under such conditions, an implicature-based explanation is implausible, since conversational implicature requires communicative intentions and expectations that are arguably absent in such cases.
(2) Metalinguistic disputes can be either descriptive, over how an expression is used, or normative, over how it ought to be used. Conversational implicatures are cancellable. Yet speakers engaged in descriptive metalinguistic disputes cannot cancel the alleged implicatures, whereas speakers engaged in normative metalinguistic disputes can. This second problem is more profound, since it persists even under a non-Gricean conception of implicature that avoids the first problem.
I conclude that implicature-based accounts provide, at best, an incomplete explanation of metalinguistic disputes.
REFERENCES
Belleri, Delia (2017): “Verbalism and metalinguistic negotiation in ontological disputes” in: Philosophical Studies 174: 2211-2226.
Mankowitz, Poppy (2021): “How to have a metalinguistic dispute” in: Synthese 199: 5603-5622.
Plunkett, David and Tim Sundell (2013): “Disagreement and the Semantics of Normative and Evaluative Terms” in: Philosophers’ Imprint Vol.13 (23): 1-37.
Plunkett, David and Tim Sundell (2021): “Metalinguistic Negotiation and speaker error” in: Inquiry Vol. 64: 142-167.
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SOPhiA 2026 