Abstract

In this chapter, we discuss the notions of descriptive and interpretive representation and the relations between them; we reject the idea the interpretive representation is based on strict identity of propositional content; we show how an utterance may be used to represent a thought that merely resembles it in propositional content, and a thought may be used to represent another similar thought; we will illustrate the advantages of this approach by applying it to three traditional semantic and pragmatic problems the analyses of metaphor, irony, and interrogative utterances.