A contextual theory of fictional names

Abstract

We review some of the most prominent challenges in the semantics and pragmatics of fictional names and propose a pragmatic theory of fictional names whereby understanding a fictional name requires imagining possible contexts of interpretation of the name. Similarly to other pragmatic approaches to fiction and fictional contexts, we maintain that fictional texts require that the interpreter engages in a game of pretense of sort and are, therefore, prescriptions to imagine a state of affairs that is not the real one. In contrast to these approaches, however, we propose that interpreting a fictional text does not require imagining a set of possible state of affairs where the text would be true but, rather, requires imagining a set of possible contexts where the text would be meaningful. In order to apply this framework to fictional names, we adopt a contextual theory of proper names, which we have proposed and defended in previous work.