Varieties of Metalinguistic Negotiation

David Plunkett, Timothy Sundell

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

In both co-authored and solo-authored work over the past decade, we have developed the idea of “metalinguistic negotiation”. On our view, metalinguistic negotiation is a type of dispute in which speakers appear to use (rather than explicitly mention) a term in conflicting ways to put forward views about how that very term should be used. In this paper, we explore four possible dimensions of variation among metalinguistic negotiations, and the interactions among those dimensions. These types of variation matter for understanding the nature, and the potential range, of the phenomenon of metalinguistic negotiation. As an illustration of the latter, we argue in our concluding section that understanding the full range of forms that metalinguistic negotiations can take has implications for debates about the “implementation” of conceptual engineering proposals.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)983-999
Number of pages17
JournalTopoi
Volume42
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.

Funding

Thanks to Pedro Abreu, Chris Barker, Alexis Burgess, Elisabeth Camp, Herman Cappelen, Andy Egan, Jesse Ferraioli, Valerie Friedmann, Sean Kim, Devontae Lacasse, Zachary Lang, Peter Ludlow, Tristram McPherson, Mark Richard, Adrian Russian, Rachel Sterken, Giulia Terzian, Zoe Thierfelder, Amie Thomasson, Fangzhou Yu, anonymous referees, and audiences at the Nova University of Lisbon and the University of Warsaw for helpful discussion about ideas in this paper or for feedback on previous drafts of this paper.

FundersFunder number
Universidade Nova de Lisboa

    Keywords

    • Conceptual engineering
    • Conceptual ethics
    • Metalinguistic disputes
    • Metalinguistic negotiation
    • Metalinguistic usage

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Philosophy

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