This book investigates the fundamental mechanisms of human communication by challenging the traditional reliance on Gricean conversational implicature to explain how speakers convey meaning. Ernie Lepore and Matthew Stone, both established scholars in philosophy and linguistics, argue that existing models of language are insufficient for capturing the complexity of human interaction. They propose a new framework that posits language as a diverse set of tools that actively recruit human imagination rather than relying solely on conventional rules or simple reinterpretation of literal meanings.

Experts in the field of philosophy of language recognize this work as a significant challenge to standard pragmatic theories. Readers frequently note the academic density of the prose, which requires a strong background in linguistic theory to fully grasp the authors' arguments.