‘Il guigne seulement du doigt par où nous irons’: Underspecification in Montaigne’s Essais

Abstract:Throughout the Essais, Montaigne dwells on the mechanics of communication, considering the role of intention and inference in interpretation. His cognitively inflected approach to communication resonates with the account of utterance interpretation offered by relevance theory in the field of pragmatics. Relevance theory elucidates patterns across Montaigne’s discussions of apparently disparate communicative domains in the Essais. This article demonstrates the point by examining his portrayals of exchanges in diplomacy and jurisprudence, and the account he offers of his own authorial communication, with reference to underspecification, relevance theory’s notion that utterances provide only sparse evidence of the speaker’s intended meaning.