Having defined what a speaker means in terms of what the speaker expresses, we will now define speaker expression in terms of intention and evidential meaning. The basic idea is that to express a thought or other mental state is to provide an indication that it is occurring to us. We will distinguish speaker expression from closely related concepts, particularly that of evidential expression. Competing analyses of speaker expression will be discussed in Chapter 4. Word expression will be defined in Part II.

SPEAKER, WORD, AND EVIDENTIAL SENSES

As we noted in Chapter 2, expression resembles meaning in having speaker, word, and evidential senses, related in roughly the same ways.

1. The look on S's face expresses fear. (Evidential Expression)

2. The word “fear” expresses the idea of fear. (Word Expression)

3. By saying “I'm afraid,” S is expressing fear. (Speaker Expression)

The first and most obvious difference concerns the subject to which the predicate “express” applies. In the speaker sense, the term applies to a person or other animate object, and does so in virtue of the person's saying or doing something. In the other two senses, the term “express” applies to inanimate objects like words or facial expressions, and not in virtue of their doing or saying anything themselves. Second, “x expressed fear” entails “x expressed himself” in the speaker sense, but words and facial expressions cannot express themselves. Third, “x expresses fear” entails “x is an expression” only in the nonspeaker senses.