What is the Literal Meaning of a Sentence?*

In this paper, Katz and Searle's controversy over literal meaning will be discussed in the light of relevance theory. Although their notions are drastically different, these notions have their places in utterance interpretation processes and there is no point in deciding whose notion is right. Katz's notion can be characterised as a relevance notion logical form which is an output of the hearer's knowledge of grammar, while Searle's, propositional form, which is a contextually enriched logical form. 1 will introduce a relevance notion literal interpretation which can not only be contrasted with figurative use, but also with non-figurative loose use (e.g. France is hexagonai)