Speaker's reference, semantic reference, sneaky reference

Abstract

According to what is perhaps the dominant picture of reference, what a referential term refers to in a context is determined by what the speaker intends for her audience to identify as the referent. I argue that this sort of broadly Gricean view entails, counterintuitively, that it is impossible to knowingly use referential terms in ways that one expects or intends to be misunderstood. After exploring several possible responses—each of which ultimately proves unsatisfactory—I sketch an alternative which can better account for such opaque uses of language, or what I call ‘sneaky reference’. I close by reflecting on the ramifications of these arguments for the theory of meaning more broadly, as opposed to just the theory of reference.