Conventional meaning

Most accounts of communicative intention presuppose a picture of communication on which the utterer is the only agent of a communicative action. I develop the collectivist account of communication, which, in contrast, holds that core communicative action (sincere communication whose goal is the transfer of information) has to be performed by the utterer and the audience together intentionally. On my account, communicative intentions are so-called we-intentions, intentions with a distinctive content which cannot be reduced to intentions to perform individual actions. The irreducibility of shared intentional actions to agglomerations of individual actions explains why attempts to modify Paul Grice's influential account of meaning in response to various objections have had an air of a "wild clause-chase", as they set off after an individualist construal of an inherently social phenomenon. The collectivist account of communication is the starting point for my account of meaning conventions. I argue that to have a meaning is to have a specific functional role (a status function) in core communication. I show that the imposition of status functions involves the adoption of conventions which I understand as structures of appropriately interlocking we-intentions of utterers and audiences.