Critical Pragmatics on Fictional Names: Some Problems Concerning Network Content

Abstract

The paper discusses the application of the idea of network content to fictional names, as proposed by Korta and Perry in Critical Pragmatics. Given that fictional names lack referential content, it is network content that is taken to play a crucial role in their semantic explanation. In connection with that, I argue, in the first place, that it is not clear what is involved in being competent at the level of network content, or, in other words, what kind of awareness can be considered to be characteristic of those speakers who are only reflexively, though not referentially, competent with a name, as is the case with the use of fictional names. Secondly, I motivate the thought that fictional names are different from mythical ones, and, as such, both their introduction and further uses are characterized by the absence of any referential intention whatsoever, which seems to leave us without a notion of network content to account for their semantic profile.