One way of approaching linguistic meaning is to think about translation claims between languages – interlinguistic semantic claims. Another approach focuses more directly on meaning claims concerning words or sentences within a language, on intralinguistic semantic claims. It is when focusing on intralinguistic issues that analyticity intuitions find their clearest voice; indeed, one cannot get very far at all in thinking about intralinguistic meaning claims without confronting difficult issues about analyticity. In this chapter we present our own account of the analytic/synthetic distinction. Though we accept much of Quine's negative appraisal, the analytic/synthetic distinction does have a useful place, we argue, in socio-linguistic practice; what needs to be resisted is certain philosophical – more specifically, epistemological – uses of that distinction.

Quine's polemic against synonymy and the analytic/synthetic distinction has many facets.