Literal Meaning and Psychological Theory*

Abstract

This paper evaluates the psychological status of literal meaning. Most linguistic and philosophical theories assume that sentences have well‐specified literal meanings which represent the meaning of a sentence independent of context. Recent debate on this issue has centered on whether literal meaning can be equated with context‐free meaning, or whether a sentence's literal meaning is determined only given a set of background assumptions. Neither of these positions meet the demands of a psychological theory of language understanding. Sentences do not have well‐defined literal meanings, regardless of whether these are determined in light of a set of background assumptions. Moreover, the putative literal meanings of sentences do not contribute in systematic ways toward the understanding of speakers' utterance meanings. These observations suggest that the distinctions between literal and metaphoric meanings, and between semantics and pragmatics, have little psychological validity.