Word and World: Practice and the Foundations of Language

by Patricia Hanna, Bernard Harrison

Overview

Proposing a new account of the nature of language, founded upon an original interpretation of Wittgenstein, Patricia Hanna and Bernard Harrison deny the existence of a direct referential relationship between words and things. Their provocative re-examination of the interrelations of language and social practice will interest not only philosophers of language but also linguists, psycholinguists, and students of communication.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521822879
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	12/15/2003
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.29(h) x 1.34(d)

Table of Contents

Introduction; Part I. Scepticism and Language: 1. The prison-house of language; 2. Referential realism; 3. Out of the prison-house; Part II. Names and Their Bearers: 4. Russell's principle and Wittgenstein's slogan; 5. The name-tracking network; 6. Rigidity; 7. Description and causes; 8. Knowledge of rules; Part III. Propositions: 9. Meaning and truth; 10. Truth and use; 11. Unnatural kinds; 12. Necessity and 'grammar'; Part IV. Paradoxes of Interpretation: 13. Indeterminacy of translation; 14. Linguistic competence; 15. Paradox and substitutivity; Epilogue.