This article’s objective is to present to the linguists the philosophical discussion about the role of context in semantic theory. Contextualists claim that certain contextual information that is not demanded by strictly linguistic rules must be present in the meaning we attribute to utterances. An author who has developed persuasive arguments in favor of this position is the French philosopher François Recanati. We will present here some of his arguments and some of the consequences that his hypotheses, if they are exact, imply for linguistic theory. We will conclude with some brief remarks regarding the way linguists should partake on this philosophically originated debate.O objetivo deste artigo é apresentar aos linguistas a discussão fi...