. Not the same as linguistic PHILOSOPHY, nor as linguistics, which studies the general features of natural languages structurally (synchronic) or historically (diachronic, also called philology).
As a separate study, philosophy of language is a recent offshoot of logic, connected also to epistemology, metaphysics and philosophy of mind. It asks general questions about language as such, not (like linguistics) about particular languages. The latter, of course, provide examples.
The primary end of language is communication. Other ends, like getting people to do things, depend on this. Many things can be communicated—information, requests, commands, ideas, innuendoes, etc. (cf. SPEECH ACTS). Whether the primary function of language is to inform (or assert) may be disputed, but this function in fact receives most attention. Two concepts which are therefore of central importance are TRUTH and FACTS. The question of how communication is possible, or how language works, involves us in studying the notion of MEANINGCONCEPTS, propositions and statements (see SENTENCES) have been thought necessary to account for meaning, and they raise problems about what they are and what properties they have (e.g. the ANALYTIC/synthetic distinction).
A study of language in general will naturally ask whether there are any features every language must share. Such features might be ones without which a language could not exist. It might be claimed, for example, that every language must include ways of referring to particular objects, or ways of negating; or the features might be needed because human nature is what it is. (N.Chomsky claims that certain features of language are universal and throw light on how the mind works. Cf. CATEGORIES.) It is also claimed (Davidson) that to be learnable a language must be compositional, i.e. the meanings of sentences must depend systematically on the meanings of words.
Further general questions about language include how far animals can have language, whether there can be a PRIVATE LANGUAGE, and whether ideal languages are possible, of which natural languages are defective versions (as, for example, Russell and perhaps Plato thought). Artificial languages, whether used in science or computing or constructed for theoretical interest, can also be studied.
After the Second World War, naming and verificationist theories of MEANING were rejected, and there followed the piecemeal approach of linguistic PHILOSOPHY, dominated by Wittgenstein and Austin. METAPHYSICS has also used philosophy of language on topics like SUBSTANCE. Recently there has been some return to large-scale theorizing stemming from Chomsky, whose contribution involves applying mathematical techniques to problems connected with the attempt to specify all the sentences constructable in a given language. There have also been substantial developments in the theory of meaning, pioneered by writers like Davidson and Putnam; see REALISM.
*W.Alston, Philosophy of Language, Prentice-Hall, 1964. (General introduction.)
J.L.Austin, How to Do Things with Words, Oxford UP, 1962. (Functions of language, by major exponent of speech act analyses).
J.F.Bennett, Rationality, RKP, 1964. (Can animals have language?)
S.Blackburn, Spreading the Word, Clarendon, 1984. (General introduction to philosophy of language, combined with positive philosophizing and developing his ‘quasi-realism’.)
T.Burge, ‘Philosophy of language and mind: 1950–90’, Philosophical Review, 1992. (Survey article with many references. See esp. 1st half for philosophy of language.)
D.Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, Oxford UP, 1984. (Collected essays of major contributor to recent developments.)
*J.Lyons, Chomsky, Fontana, 1970, expanded 1977. (Elementary introduction. cf. also Chomsky’s lecture series Languages and the Problems of Knowledge, MIT Press, 1988.)
H.Putnam, Philosophical Papers, Volume 2: Mind, Language and Reality, Cambridge UP, 1975.
P.F.Strawson, Individuals, Methuen, 1959. (Part 2 discusses role of referring.)
L.Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, Blackwell, 1953. (Probably most important of his many books. Cf. his Tractatus (see bibliography to LOGICAL ATOMISM) for earlier stage in his thought.)
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