Presemantic role of context in a use of ascriptive expressions

From the whole set of ascriptive expressions, at least two types can be distinguished: expressions, the use of which is determined by a certain extralinguistic rule, and expressions, the use of which is determined by the personal position or assessment of the agent of speech. For expressions of the first type, it is characteristic that their use in the language may turn out to be either legal or illegal. Whereas the use of ascriptive expressions of both types can be considered from the point of view of communicative success. In both cases, the context of the speech situation plays a decisive role. It is thanks to the context that it becomes possible to determine whether the speaker is oriented to a certain rule or his statement is oriented to a personal setting. In exactly the same way, the context is used to assess the legality of the use of an ascriptive expression, since the law itself is one of the elements that form the context. This use of context by John Perry is called presemantic. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

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