What we mean, what we think we mean, and how language surprises us

Abstract

Book synopsis: This collection of essays brings about a current interdisciplinary debate on explicit communication. With Robyn Carston's pragmatics at the core of the discussion, special attention is drawn to linguistic underdeterminacy, the explicit/implicit divide and also to the construction or recruitment of concepts in on-line utterance comprehension, which is a particularly contentious area within the broader theme of the limits of explicitness in linguistic communication. Carston contributes with her current views and responds to some of the issues and criticisms raised