<p>The sender-receiver model, developed by David Lewis and extended by Brian Skyrms and others, has become an important framework for the naturalistic study of communication and meaning. This paper examines the model as it stands today and argues for a deflationary, pragmatic, and pluralist interpretation of the debates it has generated. I focus on two areas of active controversy: syntax and signal content. On syntax, I assess the account of Planer (2019) and Planer and Godfrey-Smith (2021), which identifies syntax with the presence of combinatorial structure governed by an encoding principle that gives semantic significance to sequence properties. I argue that this account faces counterexamples – involving order-independent compositionality, non-sequential encoding, and two-dimensional spatial arrangements – that reveal the concept of syntax to be heterogeneous rather than unified. On signal content, I survey informational, functional, and propositional accounts and show that each faces systematic counterexamples. The resulting picture motivates a neo-Carnapian point of view - one where debates about what signals “really mean” or what “really counts” as syntax are best understood as debates about which linguistic framework to adopt, not as disputes about underlying metaphysical reality. Different frameworks pick out different features of communicative systems, and the choice between them is practical rather than factual. I conclude by extending this pluralism to the sender-receiver model itself – the model is not a correct account of what communication “really” is, but the most fruitful framework available.</p>