According to the received view in the literature on homonymy and polysemy representation, there is a difference between how polysemes and homonyms are represented in our mental lexicons. More concretely, the received view holds that whereas the meanings associated with a homonymous expression are (mentally) represented in separate lexical entries, the meanings associated with a polysemous expression are represented together in a single lexical entry. It is usually argued that this is the picture that is supported by the growing body of empirical evidence coming from psycholinguistics. Empirical studies of ambiguity processing and resolution consistently show that polysemous expressions enjoy various processing advantages compared to homonyms, and the received view is generally taken to be required in order to explain these results. The aim of this paper is not only to show that this is not the case but also, and more fundamentally, that the received view falls far short of explaining the available data to a sufficient degree. As a result, the received view is caught up in an explanatory dilemma that I dub the Continuum Puzzle. I then claim that the best way to escape this puzzle is to give up the received view’s core thesis in favor of an alternative view consistent with the empirical evidence. Reaching such an alternative will require rejecting the following pervasive but ill-motivated assumption: Differences in ambiguity processing and resolution can only be explained by there being some corresponding differences in the architecture of our mental lexicons.

It is well-known that, in Naming and Necessity (1981/1972), Kripke advocates for the view that proper names are rigid designators that do not semantically encode any information about their bearers. It is less well-known that, in the literature on polysemy, some proper names are held to be inherently polysemous (e.g., “France” and “Paris”). This paper reveals a tension between Kripke’s picture and some central semantic hypotheses that have emerged from the polysemy literature. Indeed, it shows that commonly held views about inherent polysemy and the proper names that are held to instantiate it fail to concur with Kripke’s proposal. The conclusion is that inherently polysemous proper names pose a threat to the assumption that Kripke’s semantic theses generalize to all proper names.

It is well-established within linguistics that slang serves a group-identifying function. In this paper, a new understanding of the notion of lexical metadata is developed to provide a philosophical treatment of said function. The proposed account explains the group-identifying function of slang in terms of certain inferences about a speaker's group affiliations that people competent with a slang word will be disposed to make given the lexical metadata related to the word in question. The resulting view is theoretically simple and may extend to a whole range of linguistic phenomena that speakers utilize to position themselves in social space.

Although often overlooked in philosophy, slang has long intrigued linguists as a dynamic and socially significant linguistic phenomenon. This paper seeks to give an account of slang that is theoretically useful, aligned with common intuitions about what distinguishes slang from other linguistic phenomena, as well as conducive to a better understanding of slang’s social significance. It proposes that slang is characteristically nonstandard, nontechnical, informal, and part of the in-group language of a social group. The account agrees with most contemporary views of slang within linguistics, but clarifies and brings key insights together in novel ways. The paper also demonstrates slang’s connection to broader philosophical discussions on socially significant linguistic phenomena, such as slurs and dogwhistles, arguing for its deeper consideration within philosophical inquiry.