There has been recent interest in the idea that speakers who appear to be having a verbal dispute may in fact be engaged in a metalinguistic negotiation: they are communicating information about how they believe an expression should be used. For example, individuals involved in a dispute about whether a racehorse is an athlete might be communicating their diverging views about how ‘athlete’ should be used. While many have argued that metalinguistic negotiation is a pervasive feature of philosophical and everyday discourse, the literature currently lacks an account of this phenomenon that can be situated within a ‘mainstream’ view of communication. I propose an independently motivated account where individuals reconstruct metalinguistic propositions by means of a pragmatic, Gricean reasoning process.

最近有人对这样的想法感兴趣，即看似有口头争议的说话者实际上可能正在参与元语言谈判：他们正在交流有关他们认为应该如何使用表达的信息。例如，参与关于赛马是否是运动员的争议的个人可能会表达他们对如何使用“运动员”的不同看法。虽然许多人认为元语言谈判是哲学和日常话语的普遍特征，但目前的文献缺乏对这种现象的描述，这种现象可以置于沟通的“主流”观点中。我提出了一个独立动机的解释，其中个人通过务实的 Gricean 推理过程重建元语言命题。