Being metalinguistic doesn’t make it circular

Metalinguistic views of proper names are often written off on the ground that they are ‘blatantly circular’ (Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity, 72). This article exonerates metalinguistic views from the charge of circularity. I begin by distinguishing a word from its associated form: while words have semantic properties, forms – which are types of sounds, inscriptions, or gestures – do not. Quotation marks can be used to form a quote-name of either a word or its associated form. I argue that the impression of circularity in metalinguistic views results from the decision to resolve the ambiguity of quotation in the metalinguistic specification of the meaning of a proper name in one way rather than the other – i.e. by taking quotation as forming quote-names of words. Metalinguistic views, however, are not committed to this understanding of quotation. On the contrary, I argue that a plausible and charitable reading of metalinguistic views should take the quotation (in the metalinguistic specification of the meaning of a proper name) to be a quote-name of a form. When metalinguistic views are thus understood, the circularity worry does not even arise.