The book is divided into three parts.The first serves as an introduction to the theoretical framework which is applied in the following two parts, and addresses such issues as the nature of communication, the definition and role of the context, the role of inferencein utterance interpretation, and the dichotomy between semantic and pragmatic meaning. The second part deals with the recovery of the explicit conteent of utterances, and covers topics like reference assignment, the recovery of ellipsed material, the interpretation of non-declarative utterances, and the role of performative utterances. The final part is concerned with the recovery of inaplicit meaning and includes discussion of implicatures, the role of discourseconnectives, and the interpretation of figurative utterances.