Philosophy of Language: A Contemporary Introduction

by Lycan; William G

• ISBN13: 9780415957526
• ISBN10: 0415957524
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2008-04-08
• Publisher: Routledge
• More Book Details

Summary

Philosophy of Language: a Contemporary Introduction introduces the student to the main issues and theories in twentieth-century philosophy of language, focusing specifically on linguistic phenomena. Topics are structured in three parts in the book. Part I, Reference and Referring Expressions, includes topics such as Russell's Theory of Desciptions, Donnellan's distinction, problems of anaphora, the description theory of proper names, Searle's cluster theory, and the causal-historical theory. Part II, Theories of Meaning, surveys the competing theories of linguistic meaning and compares their various advantages and liabilities. Part III, Pragmatics and Speech Acts, introduces the basic concepts of linguistic pragmatics, includes a detailed discussion of the problem of indirect force and surveys approaches to metaphor. Part IV, new to this edition, examines the four theories of metaphor. Features of Philosophy of Language include: New chapters on Frege and puzzles, inferentialism, illocutionary theories ofmeaning and relevance theory chapter overviews and summaries clear supportive examples study questions annotated further reading glossary

Author Biography

William G. Lycan is William Rand Kenan Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Acknowledgements	p. xi
Acknowledgements for the Second Edition	p. xii
Introduction: meaning and reference	p. 1
Overview	p. 1
Meaning and understanding	p. 1
The Referential Theory	p. 3
Summary	p. 6
Questions	p. 6
Further reading	p. 6
Reference and referring
Definite descriptions	p. 9
Overview	p. 9
Singular terms	p. 10
Russell's Theory of Descriptions	p. 12
Objections to Russell's theory	p. 19
Summary	p. 29
Questions	p. 30
Further reading	p. 30
Proper names: the Description Theory	p. 31
Overview	p. 31
Frege and the puzzles	p. 31
Opening objections	p. 36
Searle's Cluster Theory	p. 38
Kripke's critique	p. 39
Summary	p. 43
Questions	p. 43
Further reading	p. 44
Proper names: Direct Reference and the Causal-Historical Theory	p. 45
Overview	p. 45
Possible worlds	p. 46
Rigidity and proper names	p. 47
Direct Reference	p. 49
The Causal-Historical Theory	p. 53
Problems for the Causal-Historical Theory	p. 55
Natural-kind terms and "Twin Earth"	p. 58
Summary	p. 60
Questions	p. 61
Further reading	p. 61
Theories of meaning	p. 63
Traditional theories of meaning	p. 65
Overview	p. 65
The Proposition Theory	p. 68
Summary	p. 74
Questions	p. 74
Further reading	p. 74
"Use" theories	p. 76
Overview	p. 76
"Use" in a roughly Wittgensteinian sense	p. 77
Objections and some replies	p. 79
Inferentialism	p. 83
Summary	p. 84
Questions	p. 85
Further reading	p. 85
Psychological theories: Grice's program	p. 86
Overview	p. 86
Grice's basic idea	p. 86
Speaker-meaning	p. 88
Sentence meaning	p. 92
Summary	p. 96
Questions	p. 96
Further reading	p. 97
Verificationism	p. 98
Overview	p. 98
The theory and its motivation	p. 98
Some objections	p. 100
The big one	p. 105
Summary	p. 108
Questions	p. 108
Further reading	p. 108
Truth-Condition Theories: Davidson's program	p. 109
Overview	p. 109
Truth conditions	p. 109
Truth-defining natural languages	p. 114
Objections to the Davidsonian version	p. 117
Summary	p. 123
Questions	p. 124
Further reading	p. 125
Truth-Condition Theories: possible worlds and intensional semantics	p. 126
Overview	p. 126
Truth conditions reconceived	p. 126
Advantages over Davidson's view	p. 129
Remaining objections	p. 131
Summary	p. 133
Questions	p. 133
Further reading	p. 133
Pragmatics and speech acts	p. 135
Semantic pragmatics	p. 137
Overview	p. 137
Semantic pragmatics vs. pragmatic pragmatics	p. 138
The problem of deixis	p. 139
The work of semantic pragmatics	p. 141
Summary	p. 143
Questions	p. 143
Further reading	p. 143
Speech acts and illocutionary force	p. 144
Overview	p. 144
Performatives	p. 144
Infelicities and constitutive rules	p. 149
Cohen's problem	p. 151
Illocutionary theories of meaning	p. 153
Summary	p. 154
Questions	p. 154
Further reading	p. 155
Implicative relations	p. 156
Overview	p. 156
Conveyed meanings and invited inferences	p. 157
Conversational implicature	p. 158
Presupposition and conventional implicature	p. 163
Relevance Theory	p. 166
Indirect force	p. 168
Summary	p. 170
Questions	p. 171
Further reading	p. 171
The dark side	p. 173
Metaphor	p. 175
Overview	p. 175
A philosophical bias	p. 175
The issues, and two simple theories	p. 176
Davidson's causal theory	p. 177
The Naive Simile Theory	p. 179
The Figurative Simile Theory	p. 180
The Pragmatic Theory	p. 183
Metaphor as analogical	p. 187
Summary	p. 189
Questions	p. 190
Further reading	p. 190
Notes	p. 191
Glossary	p. 201
Bibliography	p. 205
Index	p. 217
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