Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

In his influential 1978 paper “Assertion”, Robert Stalnaker characterized the relative roles of assertion and presupposition in a broadly Gricean framework. There are well-known objections to Gricean accounts of assertion (Alston 2000, ch. 2; Green 2007, ch. 3), which suggest that assertion should be defined in normative terms, as opposed to the descriptive, intention-based characteristic of Gricean proposals. My goal for this paper is to extend these considerations to presuppositions, understood as indications of ancillary speech acts, by focussing on the phenomenon of accommodation. I will argue for a normative account of presuppositions, and I will explore the consequences of the account for recent debates regarding the proper account of norms of assertion.