An introduction to formal semantic theories (focusing on truth-conditional semantics) and dual pragmatic accounts (focusing on Sperber and Wilson’s relevance theory and Recanati’s contextualism). The chapter gives an initial examination of the distinct challenges posed by advocates of dual pragmatic accounts and the precise nature of the debate between the two approaches. The chapter also looks at the notion of logical form deployed by both kinds of semantic theory.
Keywords: contextualism, dual pragmatics, formal semantics, logical form., relevance theory, truth-conditional semantics