The Anthropology of Intentions
Language in a World of Others

This multidisciplinary study explores how people make sense of each other's actions.

Alessandro Duranti (Author)

9781107652033, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 8 January 2015

237 pages, 18 b/w illus. 1 map
22.7 x 15.1 x 1.8 cm, 0.45 kg

'Duranti's The Anthropology of Intentions is a wonderful read that explores the problem of intention both theoretically and empirically and why it matters. The book blends empirical research with theoretical scholarship in a way that is accessible to readers.' Lee Trepanier, VoegelinView

How and to what extent do people take into account the intentions of others? Alessandro Duranti sets out to answer this question, showing that the role of intentions in human interaction is variable across cultures and contexts. Through careful analysis of data collected over three decades in US and Pacific societies, Duranti demonstrates that, in some communities, social actors avoid intentional discourse, focusing on the consequences of actions rather than on their alleged original goals. In other cases, he argues, people do speculate about their own intentions or guess the intentions of others, including in some societies where it was previously assumed they avoid doing so. To account for such variation, Duranti proposes an 'intentional continuum', a concept that draws from phenomenology and the detailed analysis of face-to-face interaction. A combination of new essays and classic re-evaluations, the book draws together findings from anthropology, linguistics and philosophy to offer a penetrating account of the role of intentions in defining human action.

1. Rethinking anti-intentionalism
2. Intentions in speaking and acting: the Standard Theory and its foes
3. The avoidance of intentional discourse: a Samoan case study
4. The invention of promising in the Samoan translation of the Bible
5. Intentionality and truth, revisited
6. Speaker intentions and the role of the audience in a political campaign in the US
7. A dialogue on intentions
8. Opacity of other minds: local theories revisited
9. Intentions and their modifications: a lesson from Husserl
10. A sense of the other: from intentionality to intersubjectivity
11. The intentional continuum.

Subject Areas: Anthropology [JHM], Philosophy of mind [HPM], Philosophy [HP], Semantics, discourse analysis, etc [CFG], Linguistics [CF]