This book investigates the validity of the distinction between what is said and what is implied in linguistic communication. Mark Jary, an academic specializing in the philosophy of language, challenges the foundational assumption that the notion of 'saying' is a necessary component for modeling basic communicative acts. He argues that importing this concept into linguistic theory creates unnecessary complications and proposes a framework that moves away from traditional truth-conditional accounts of utterance interpretation.

Experts in the philosophy of language recognize this work as a rigorous challenge to established pragmatic frameworks. Readers frequently note the academic density of the prose, which requires a strong background in analytic philosophy to fully navigate.