What is Said

This chapter provides a new theory of the notion of what is said that is central to the book’s account of assertion, and hence of lying. It argues that what is said by utterances, in context, is relative to discourse structure, in particular, to socalled questions under discussion. The chapter shows that utterances of the same declarative sentence can be used to say, and hence assert, different things relative to which question is being addressed. In turn, the same declarative utterance may be a lie relative to one question under discussion and merely misleading relative to another question under discussion. Discourse-insensitive accounts of what is said fail to capture the lying-misleading distinction. A semantics for questions is provided and is employed in a detailed definition of what is said relative to questions under