Checking Searle's Background

The literal meaning of an ordinary sentence is often consistent with unacceptable interpretations. Searle's hypothesis of the Background enables us to understand how that literal meaning might nevertheless yield a determinate condition of satisfaction. But Searle intends the Background to be a condition on representation in general, not just on the representational significance of linguistic items. This paper argues, using distinctions Searle himself has drawn, that it is in the transmission of intentionality from the mental to the linguistic that a gap between meaning and condition of satisfaction opens up. A sharper distinction between mental and linguistic intentionality, thus, checks the role of the Background.