Lewis, Language, Lust and Lies

David Lewis has tried to explain what it is for a possible language to be the actual language of a population in terms of his game-theoretical notion of a convention. This explanation of the actual language relation is re-evaluated in the light of some typical episodes of linguistic communication, and it is argued that speakers of a language do not generally stand in the actual language relation to that language if the actual language relation is explicated in Lewis ’ s way. In order to avoid these counterexamples, an alternative account of the actual language relation is proposed which makes use of Lewis ’ s notion of convention in a different way. `Ti amo ’ , said Romeo to Juliet, thereby defying convention, for a Montague boy just did not declare love for a Capulet Girl. There was one sort of convention, however, Romeo humbly conformed to: the linguistic conven-tions prevalent in Verona at the time. Had different linguistic conventions prevailed, he would have emitted a different sound, for example the sound `I love you ’. Most people agree that language is, in some sense, conventional. Davi