Abstract

In this paper I examine the adequacy of Kaplanian semantics in accounting for the interpretation of the first-person pronoun ‘I’. While standard accounts following Kaplan treat ‘I’ as an indexical whose referent is invariably the utterer, I observe that a range of non-standard uses, such as proxy, deferred, and metonymic uses, pose challenges to this assumption. Existing Kaplan-based frameworks tend either to marginalize these cases as peripheral or to force them into a strictly semantic model, thereby leaving a gap in explaining their systematicity and interpretive coherence. My objective in this paper is to demonstrate that such non-standard uses are not anomalous but constitute a structured set of linguistic phenomena that require a pragmatic, rather than purely semantic, account. To this end, I employ a philosophical-analytic methodology combining conceptual analysis, reconstruction of theoretical commitments, and evaluation through paradigm cases and counterexamples. I first explain Kaplan’s core claims about indexical reference and then test it against three categories of usage: standard utterer-referent cases, proxy or deferred uses, and metonymic uses. I argue that Kaplanian semantics, while successful for standard cases, fails to provide a unified explanation for the broader patterns of use. The main finding is that reference determination for ‘I’ in such contexts is systematically mediated by pragmatic factors, including speaker intentions, contextual roles, and communicative conventions. On this basis, I develop a pragmatic framework that accounts for both standard and non-standard uses of ‘I’ without entirely abandoning the insights of Kaplan’s theory. The paper contributes to current scholarship by offering a more comprehensive account of first-person reference that integrates semantic and pragmatic dimensions, thereby extending and refining existing theories of indexicality. It also provides a strong basis for re-evaluating the limits of Kaplanian contextualism.

Keywords

Indexicals, Kaplan, Contextualism, Semantics, Pragmatics,

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