meantwhether

Meantwhether is a theoretical term used in linguistics and discourse analysis to describe a class of utterances that simultaneously express a speaker’s intended meaning and signal a meta-level question about that meaning’s status. The word is a portmanteau of meant and whether, reflecting its two-part function: indicating commitment to a proposition while introducing a conditional or epistemic hedge about that proposition.

Origin and usage

Meantwhether arose in discussions of how speakers manage intent and uncertainty in real-time conversation. It is not a standard grammatical category in prescriptive grammars, but it has been proposed as a useful label for analyzing sentences where intention and conditional inquiry are intertwined. Researchers typically apply the concept in descriptions of deliberative speech, hedged judgments, and situations requiring readers or listeners to weigh alternative outcomes.

The functional profile

Meantwhether conveys two intertwined aims. First, it communicates the speaker’s intended content or decision (the meaning the speaker wants to assert or adopt). Second, it foregrounds a question about that content’s status, such as whether it should be accepted, acted upon, or treated as tentative. This dual function can arise from explicit constructions, hedges, or navigations around ambiguity in decision-making talk.

Examples

- I meant whether to go tonight. (signals an intention to decide about going, with an embedded conditional about the decision itself.)

- We discussed the plan, meantswhether it would work. (analyzed as incorporating both the proposed meaning and a conditional evaluation of its success.)

See also

Hedging, stance analysis, epistemic modality, metarepresentation.