1st Edition

Philosophy of Language A Contemporary Introduction

By William G. Lycan Copyright 1999

    Philosophy of Language introduces the student to the main issues and theories in twentieth-century philosophy of language. 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.
    Unique features of the text:
    * chapter overviews and summaries
    * clear supportive examples
    * study questions
    * annotated further reading
    * glossary.

    Chapter 1 Introduction; Part 1 Reference and Referring; Chapter 2 Definite Descriptions; Chapter 3 Proper Names; Chapter 4 Proper Names; Part 2 Theories of Meaning; Chapter 5 Traditional Theories of Meaning; Chapter 6 “Use” Theories; Chapter 7 Psychological Theories; Chapter 8 Verificationism; Chapter 9 Truth-Condition Theories; Chapter 10 Truth-Condition Theories; Part 3 Pragmatics and Speech Acts; Chapter 11 Semantic Pragmatics; Chapter 12 Speech Acts and Illocutionary Force; Chapter 13 Implicative Relations; Part 4 The Dark Side; Chapter 14 Metaphor;

    Biography

    William G.Lycan is a leading philosopher of language and mind. He is William Rand Kenan, Jr. Professor at the University of North Carolina. His published works include over 100 articles as well as six books, among them Logical Form in Natural Language (1984), Consciousness (1987), Judgement and Justification (1988), Modality and Meaning (1994), and Consciousness and Experience (1998).

    It is to New's credit that he has managed to distil some of the essentials without clogging his work with the excessive technicality or inpenetrable jargon.' - Journal of Literary Semantics