Abstract: The author argues that language is necessarily a social phenomenon. The argument draws heavily on considerations advanced in favour of the thesis that meaning something requires understanding, and being understood by, a second person. Davidson denies that it is necessary for successful communication between X and Y that X speaks as Y; in substitution of this requirement, Davidson proposes a three-way speaker–speaker–world relation he labels ‘triangulation’, which is not constituted by syntax but by common stimuli and responses.

Keywords: communication, language, second person, social phenomenon, syntax, triangulation, understanding,