What Malapropisms Mean: A Reply To Donald Davidson

This paper argues against Davidson's (1986) view that our ability to understand malapropisms forces us to re-think the standard construal of literal word meaning as conventional meaning. Specially, the author contends that the standard construal is not only intuitive but also well-motivated, for appeal to conventional meaning is necessary to understand why speakers utter the particular words they do. He also contends that, contra Davidson, we can preserve the intuitive distinction between what a speaker means and what his words mean, even while retaining the standard construal of literal word meaning as conventional.