 For Jackson, language is, in general, a representational system that transmits information about the way that things are taken to be to those who comprehend the language. When names are used in declarative sentences, speakers are representing things as being a certain way. The use of names in such contexts is to deliver putative information about the way things are to other speakers in the language community. According to Jackson, names do this as a function of their being parts of information channels that exist between users of the language, and the world. In order for us to track the information channel itself for the purposes of getting information from it, we must understand the structured connection between linguistic items (words and sentences), and ways that the world might be. Names themselves facilitate this practice in virtue of their being elements in the information channels that exist between us and the world. These channels are created by conventions of language use and established practices of baptism.