<p>This paper examines whether inferentialism – particularly the form developed by Robert Brandom – has substantive implications for the longstanding debate between minimalism and contextualism about context-dependence. Traditionally, the context-dependence debate has been approached by examining whether the route to the semantic content of an utterance runs exclusively via conventional, lexico-syntactic elements of a sentence uttered in a given context. While minimalists claim that contextual contributions are narrowly triggered by some formal constituents of the sentence, contextualists maintain that conversational context can freely shape an utterance’s content. Against the view that inferentialism entail substantive consequences for this debate by supporting one of its positions over others, this paper argues for a “transparency” view, which suggests that inferentialism should be regarded as a novel theoretical environment within which both minimalism and contextualism can be reformulated rather than refuted.</p>