This book deals with the philosophy of language and with what is at issue in the philosophy of language. Due to its intensity and diversity, the philosophy of language has attained the position of first philosophy in this century. To show this is the task of Part Two. But the task can be accomplished only if it is first made clear how language came to be a problem in and for philosophy and how this development has influ enced and has failed to influence our understanding of language. This is done in Part One. What is at issue in the philosophy of language today is the question regarding the source of meaning. More precisely the question is whether we have access to such a source. Again Part One presents the necessary foil for Part Two in showing how meaning was thought to originate in Western history and how the rise of the philosophy of language and the eclipse of the origin of meaning occurred jointly. Today the question of meaning has come to a peculiarly elaborate and fruitful issue in the philosophy of language, and the fate of the philosophy of language is bound up with the future possibilities of meaning.

Playing a key role in our lives, as a vehicle for our thoughts and a powerful medium of communication, language is at the centre of philosophical investigation. The fifteen specially commissioned essays in this book introduce and explore the ideas of major philosophers who have shaped philosophical thinking about language, providing insights into crucial developments in this fascinating field over the last 140 years. Chapters examine the work of Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein, Carnap, Austin, Quine, Chomsky, Grice, Davidson, Dummett, Kripke and Derrida. This second edition broadens coverage of the area with new chapters on Susan Stebbing and on recent developments in feminist philosophy of language. Featuring contributions from Arif Ahmed, Kent Bach, Thomas Baldwin, Michael Beaney, Siobhan Chapman, Kirk Ludwig and other leading experts in the field, Philosophy of Language: The Key Thinkers provides a thorough introduction to the puzzles, debates and ideas that animate contemporary philosophy of language. It is an ideal resource for undergraduate students in philosophy, linguistics and related disciplines.

This engaging and accessible introduction to the philosophy of language provides an important guide to one of the liveliest and most challenging areas of study in philosophy. Interweaving the historical development of the subject with a thematic overview of the different approaches to meaning, the book provides students with the tools necessary to understand contemporary analytical philosophy. The second edition includes new material on: Chomsky, Wittgenstein and Davidson as well as new chapters on the causal theory of reference, possible worlds semantics and semantic externalism.

This concise and affordable anthology is designed for use as a textbook in both undergraduate and graduate courses in philosophy of language. It aims to provide a core of essential primary sources and may be used either on its own, or in conjunction with a secondary source.

In Europe, and later in the United States, the revitalization of the philosophy of language emerged from the need to address certain perplexities concerning formal disciplines and to work out certain complexities found within philosophy. In Uruguay, philosophy of language began with Carlos Vaz Ferreira as an analysis of the common and argumentative uses of language but then expanded to address typically philosophical questions. Edited by Carlos Enrique Caorsi and Ricardo J. Navia, Philosophy of Language in Uruguay: Language, Meaning, and Philosophy demonstrates the different directions in which philosophy of language has developed in Uruguay in the last twenty years, giving a representative picture of how philosophical approaches from a linguistic perspective have developed in this Latin American country. Uruguayan philosophy has a very small international presence, but it has long produced works within the philosophical explorations of language that are worthy of being better known. The contributors dissect these explorations through epistemology, linguistics, argumentation, and cognitive sciences to discover how philosophers of language such as Vaz Ferreira have grown to understand the complexities of language and how it affects us today.

Philosophical themes as diverse as language, value, mind and God are among the topics discussed in this set of 11 books, originally published between 1963 and 1991. Specific volumes cover the following: The relation between persuasion and truth criticism of linguistic philosophy, questions about the nature of thought and ontological questions in general.

Beginning with works of Frege, Russell, and Wittgenstein, The Bloomsbury Companion to the Philosophy of Language provides a critical history of the core concepts in the area. From generative syntax and formal semantics to broader philosophical issues such as intentional contexts, theories of meaning and context dependence, a well-known team of experts offer insightful analysis into some of the fundamental questions asked by the philosophy of language. The result is a comprehensive introduction, featuring a series of research tools, including an A to Z of key terms and concepts, a detailed list of resources and a fully annotated bibliography. For students and scholars looking to better understand the questions and debates informing the subject, this is an essential study tool.

This book is a unique and accessible reference guide to the work of eighty key figures who have played an important role in the development of ideas about language from antiquity to the twenty-first century. The entries are extensively cross referenced, allowing readers to trace influences, developments, and debates both in contemporary thinking and across time. Each entry concludes with suggestions for further reading of primary texts and secondary sources, encouraging readers to find out more about the particular key thinker and the impact of his or her ideas.

Now in its third edition, Philosophy of Language: A Contemporary Introduction introduces students to the main issues and theories in twenty-first-century philosophy of language, focusing specifically on linguistic phenomena. Author William G. Lycan structures the book into four general parts. Part I, Reference and Referring, includes topics such as Russell's Theory of Descriptions (and its objections), 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 and includes a detailed discussion of the problem of indirect force. Part IV, The Expressive and the Figurative, examines various forms of expressive language and what "metaphorical meaning" is and how most listeners readily grasp it. Features of Philosophy of Language include: chapter overviews and summaries; clear supportive examples; study questions; annotated lists of further reading; a glossary. Updates to the third edition include: an entirely new chapter, "Expressive Language" (Chapter 14), covering verbal irony, sarcasm, and pejorative language (particularly slurs); the addition in several chapters of short sections on pretense theories, addressing (1) puzzles about reference, (2) irony, and (3) metaphor; a much expanded discussion of Relevance Theory, particularly its notion of ad hoc concept construction or "loosening and tightening," and the application of that to metaphor; new discussion of Cappelen and Lepore's skepticism about content-dependence; up-to-date coverage of new literature, further reading lists, and the bibliography, as well as an improved glossary.

This collective volume contains studies in the field of ancient grammar, poetics and philosophy of language. The contributions, written by specialists in the field, focus on central themes in the historiography of ancient linguistics, such as the status of grammar as a discipline in Antiquity, the relationship between poetics and grammatical theory, the constitution and development of the word class system, the descriptive format of grammars, the nature and description of specific word classes, the development of grammatical argumentation. In addition, several methodological issues in the study of ancient grammar and philosophy of language are dealt with: the problem of continuity vs. discontinuity in the history of linguistic thought, the role of schoolroom activities in the development of grammatical description and theory-formation, and problems concerning "tradition", "influence" and "originality" in ancient linguistics. The volume is rounded off with extensive indices of proper names, concepts and technical terms.