ABSTRACT. Contemporary accounts of linguistic content usually do not take account of the relevance that the speaker intention (as well as other related psychological elements) has in the determination of the content of the sentences uttered in our ordinary life. This has as a consequence a psychological unrealism about natural languages. This paper analyzes the contemporary debate between some of these accounts and proposes a more realistic view of linguistic meaning. First, we will expound how minimalism and contextualism understand the psychological nature of language and how their positions could be defended against criticism on this matter. Second, we will claim that both positions fail to account for the psychological realism required to understand the nature and structure of the linguistic content of our natural language. Third, we shall propose an alternative solution to this problem based on a new interpretation of ordinary language theory. pp. 11–33

Keywords: literalism, contextualism, meaning, psychological objection, passionate utterance, semantics, pragmatics