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This chapter examines the self-reference rule (SSR), which states that ‘I’ refers to the subject who produced it. In particular, it analyses the suggestion that SRR is able to provide a satisfactory account of first-person reference, and it also examines the reductionist approach to first-person reference. It is argued that while we may concede that there may be a kind of basic reflexive reference that the approach explains, there is nevertheless an element of self consciousness in the kind of first-person reference under consideration which the approach fails to capture.

This introductory chapter begins with an explanation of the main focus of the book, namely the central aspects of self-consciousness. It then discusses a first-person reference, in particular it talks about two strategies one might take in response to the objection that an appeal to the self-reference principle will be insufficient to explain first-person reference: the reductionist strategy and the two-tier strategy. An inquiry into actions and self-knowledge and an overview of the chapters in this volume are presented.

This chapter examines Evans's account of first-person reference and finds it unsatisfactory. It argues that to the extent that an account of first-person reference assumes that the referent of ‘I’ is fixed by perceptual information — which is the essential claim of a perceptual account — the account will be subject to the possibility of coherent and comprehending uses of ‘I’ surviving the absence or disturbance of such information. In order to block such a possibility, a tight conceptual dependence between our currently being able to refer to ourselves and our having available accurate perceptual information to identify the person we are would be needed.

This chapter focuses on developing an account of first-person reference, which draws on the insights of the two-tier strategy but denies that first-person reference is equivocal. It seeks to make plausible that the form of the account offered, in terms of the joint operation of SRR and a primitive form of self-awareness we have as agents (agent's awareness), is of a kind that can explain first-person reference.

This chapter presents an extended discussion of Anscombe on the problem of first-person reference. It introduces and criticizes the internal perceptual model for first-person reference. It also introduces and undercuts the motivation behind Anscombe's sceptical and unacceptable view that ‘I’ does not refer.

This chapter explores a pattern of pairing and avoidance that Korowai enact across many different areas of life activity. It then looks at what can be called dyad-based forms of person reference, in which a kinship term is joined to a personal name. Interactional avoidance, like landownership and travel across ownership margins, is organized as a questioning exploration of how people stand to each other. Beyond underlining that pairing is a characteristic Korowai mode of relation making, it has attempted more specifically to make clear the kinds of relations, persons, and social worlds that are created through Korowai practices of pairing. In practices of pairing and avoidance, Korowai specifically focus on alterity as a core aspect of signifying acts. Dyad-based person reference forms, along with mother-in-law avoidance, signal people's histories of emerging from or being involved with others' bodies and bodily actions.

This chapter outlines the idea that the grammatical system of the language provides a rich context with affordances for social action. One feature of the grammatical system is that it provides the resources for building turns in enchronic sequences of interaction. A second feature of the grammatical system is that it provides alternative symbolic means for carrying out comparable actions, thus relating directly to agency. Hence the language system affords significant flexibility for individuals, though this flexibility is not unconstrained, and furthermore the system also features normative accountability. The chapter presents a case study of the Lao system of person reference, showing that it is closely tied to an ideology among Lao speakers of social hierarchical differences among all people in a community. The details of people's grammatical selection reveal their cultural values concerning social relationships.

Chapter 5 addresses the semantic aspects of expressing the self/ego, and in particular it contains a case study first-person reference from a cross-linguistic as well as philosophical perspective, concluding that pure indexicals are philosophers’ fiction: markers of first-person reference convey more than the index and, in addition, the markers do not seem to be purpose-made for first-person reference but also perform some other functions. The solution is to ‘pragmaticize’ Kaplan’s two-dimensional semantics by relaxing the indexical/non-indexical distinction in terms of my fluid characters and a function-driven analysis of the conceptual structure, presented here in the form of merger representations—semantic representations of Default Semantics. It also contains a discussion and representations of de se beliefs and de se reports. The self, ego, first-person reference, indexical, Kaplan, two-dimensional semantics, character, conceptual structure, merger representation, semantic representation, Default Semantics, de se beliefs, de se reports

In this chapter’s first section, scholarly work on stance-taking is reviewed and the case is made why person-referencing is an important part of stance-taking during oral argument. Combining discourse analysis with simple quantitative coding, the chapter shows that attorneys’ and judges’ choices of terms for gay parties in the first three marriage cases (i.e., those in New York, New Jersey, and Washington), as well as the frequency of use of these terms, marked the stance of appellate parties toward same-sex marriage. Then the chapter describes how person-referencing of gay persons changed across time and makes the case for what these changes signify.

Working from linguistic theory on empathetic and emotional deixis, chapter 5 argues that certain deictic reference forms used to refer to defendants establish distance between speakers and defendants and contribute to their dehumanization by treating them as unindividuated types. The chapter draws a parallel between studies on empathy and physical and linguistic proximity, through which empathy is mediated. Those theorizing killing have argued that the further (physically, emotionally, culturally) one is from a victim, the harder it is to empathize and thus the easier it is to kill. Relying on this logic, chapter 5 argues that through demonstrative formulations such as “that man,” jurors and attorneys place distance between themselves and defendants, thus occluding the opportunity for empathy and facilitating sentences of death. The deictic reference forms analyzed in this chapter most frequently occur within the context of linguistic acts of dehumanization, which help jurors justify their sentences for death.

Christofaki’s chapter provides an analysis of terms used for first-person reference in Japanese, addressing the question of how de se thought is expressed in a language with a multitude of expressions for self-reference, and in particular what aspects of the self such expressions map to. The analysis shows that in addition to the direct reference account, predicated of first-person pronouns in languages such as English, these terms also convey rich conceptual and expressive content and as such defy the standard Kaplanian (1989) classification. The chapter next moves to a critical assessment of the plausibility of a linguistic relativity account of the self which has been based on these data, and supports a universalist view instead, on which, on the one hand, different aspects (or facets) of the self are distinguished, but on the other they sum up to a cross-culturally comparable self.