The central idea of language is to convey true information. We speak and write in a manner that expresses truth in two ways: the conveying of an actual state of affairs about the world (e.g., I now sit in an indifferent office in a decaying building on an undistinguished floor, or the buyer signs an agreement on a certain date with a certain intent) and the assertion that we actually believe this state of affairs to be the case (e.g., we really believe we are in our own office when we are writing this and not just saying so for the purpose of misleading or deceiving the reader, or again, quite differently, that we actually believe the buyer signed a particular agreement with a certain intent). Of course, language can be used for many other purposes, including to emote, to question, to insult, to humor, to console, and even to love, honor, and obey. Speakers are often mistaken, always fallible, occasionally misled. Something short of truth, apart from truth, in search of truth or confused, as to truth are the commonplaces of communication.

That said, truth remains the central notion of language, as evidenced, perhaps most clearly, by the fact that the falsity of any statement almost always constitutes grounds for impeaching it. Without seeing statements as being paradigmatically concerned with truth by, for example, dropping truth from the process, language becomes meaningless, empty talk. Exceptions are only sensible when measured against a norm.