A properly pragmatist pragmatics

This paper takes indexicality as a case ­study for critical examination of the distinction between semantics and pragmatics in current mainstream philosophy of language. Both a ‘pre­indexical’ and ‘post­indexical’ analytic formal semantics are examined and found wanting, and instead an argument is mounted for a ‘properly pragmatist pragmatics’, according to which we do not work out what signs mean in some abstract overall sense and then work out to what use they are being put; rather, we must understand to what use signs are being put in order to work out what they mean. This move is highly congenial to recent Brandomian explorations of the pragmatic topography of the space of reasons (e.g. Kukla and Lance, 2009), to which comparisons and contrasts will be made.