Abstract

This article examines how considerations of intonation – the prosodic features of spoken language – challenge and enrich traditional philosophical models of meaning. Beginning with the formal emphasis in early analytic philosophy like logical atomism, which largely disregarded intonation as an extraneous feature, this study traces the development of thought through Frege’s sense/force distinction and into the mid-20th-century speech act tradition inaugurated by J.L. Austin and further developed by John Searle. We argue that later analytic approaches incorporate elements of intonational meaning as indispensable to understanding illocutionary force and pragmatic aspects of language use.

We present that the marginalization of prosody in early analytic logic reflects a broader commitment to truth-conditional semantics and formal reconstruction, where meaning is equated with propositional structure and reference. By contrast, speech act theory and subsequent pragmatic frameworks reveal that intonation systematically contributes to how utterances function as assertions, questions, or commands within communicative practices. We demonstrate that intonation is therefore not merely an acoustic accompaniment but a structural indicator of force that enables propositions to operate as discourse moves. Thus, we here highlight a methodological and conceptual shift within analytic philosophy – from abstract logical modeling toward a pragmatics-sensitive account of meaning that integrates the performative and contextual dimensions of spoken language.

Key words: intonation, logical atomism, sense/force, speech act, analytic approach, meaning