Abstract/Summary

This chapter offers a brief sketch of the normativity of linguistic meaning and then considers the opposing view of semantic anti-normativism as defended by Gluer and Wickforss. The author distinguishes between three different types of obligation (moral obligation, socially enforced obligation, and freely adopted obligation) and argues that Gluer & Wickforss's position is based on a misconstrual of semantic normativity as a source of something like moral obligation, when in fact it produces only obligation of the third type.