1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910825789903321

Autore

Hanna Patricia

Titolo

Word and world : practice and the foundations of language / / Patricia Hanna, Bernard Harrison

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cambridge ; ; New York, : Cambridge University Press, 2004

ISBN

1-107-14601-1

1-280-45775-9

0-511-61654-6

0-511-18550-2

0-511-18467-0

0-511-18731-9

0-511-31347-0

0-511-18638-X

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (xii, 420 pages) : digital, PDF file(s)

Altri autori (Persone)

HarrisonBernard <1933->

Disciplina

401

Soggetti

Language and languages - Philosophy

Reference (Linguistics)

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 383-397) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Scepticism and Language: The prison-house of language -- Referential realism -- Out of the prison-house -- Names and Their Bearers: Russell's principle and Wittgenstein's slogan -- The name-tracking network -- Rigidity -- Description and causes -- Knowledge of rules -- Propositions: Meaning and truth -- Truth and use -- Unnatural kinds -- Necessity and 'grammar' -- Paradoxes of Interpretation: -- Indeterminacy of translation -- Linguistic competence -- Paradox and substitutivity.

Sommario/riassunto

This important book proposes a new account of the nature of language, founded upon an original interpretation of Wittgenstein. The authors deny the existence of a direct referential relationship between words and things. Rather, the link between language and world is a two-stage one, in which meaning is used and in which a natural language should be understood as fundamentally a collection of socially devised and



maintained practices. Arguing against the philosophical mainstream descending from Frege and Russell to Quine, Davidson, Dummett, McDowell, Evans, Putnam, Kripke and others, the authors demonstrate that discarding the notion of reference does not entail relativism or semantic nihilism. A provocative re-examination of the interrelations of language and social practice, this book will interest not only philosophers of language but also linguists, psycholinguists, students of communication and all those concerned with the nature and acquisition of human linguistic capacities.