Analyses of what it is for an utterance-type to have meaning in a language may, as those of Grice1, Lewis2, Schiffer3, and Bennett4, try to start from what it is for a speaker to mean something by an utterance. If they analyse this latter concept completely in terms of the speaker's intentions as the authors cited do they arrive at something like a gap between 'meaning for a speaker' and 'meaning in a language'. Grice tries to jump this gap by appealing to the concept of currency; meaning in a language is, in effect, what speakers usually mean. As not only Bennett has clearly pointed out5, anyone attempting such a leap will fail to reach the other side since, broadly speaking, the concept of meaning in a language is tied up with standards for correct usage, which cannot be defined by simply referring to current usage. Leaving aside the question of the validity of this argu? ment, we may note that it provides a strong motive to appeal to a further authority, viz. convention, and to regard meaning as determined by some? thing like an interplay between speakers' intentions and language group conventions. For this interplay, there seem to be two models : One accord? ing to which intention determines the meaning insofar as convention doesn't, and vice versa, and a second according to which intention deter? mines the meaning where it is appointed this role by convention. The first object of this paper is to show, in drawing heavily on an old example, that the second model is more plausible. If this is right, then the utterer's intention is a conventionally relevant circumstance contributing to the meaning of the utterance just like any of the other conventionally relevant circumstances (of context and situation) and no more a source of meaning than these. My second object is to call attention to two points which might help to explain why what a speaker intends is so often mis? takenly regarded as fundamental or semifundamental for meaning in a language. My example is Strawson's well-respected article 'Intention and Conven? tion in Speech Acts'6 in which he discusses our problem with respect to the interplay of intention and convention in determining the illocutionary