Directory of Philosophy of Language Resources

Home > Society > Philosophy > Philosophy of Language

Philosophy of language is the study of philosophical issues that arise due to the language based nature of discourse and argument. It is dominated by philosophical analysis, the branch of philosophy that occupies itself with what the structures of language tell us about the concepts we deploy in communicating. Philosophical analysis dates back to the Pre-Socratics , and was first made systematic in Aristotle's Organon, but it was with the revolutionary new developments in mathematical logic inaugurated by Frege that philosophical analysis assumed the central importance in philosophy that it does today.

Analytical philosophy is the school of philosophy which ascribes most importance to the philosophy of language, and it is in analytical philosophy that the so-called `linguistic turn' took place: this is the idea that long standing controversies in philosophy about the nature of the world and of knowledge can be settled by attention to the use of the relevant concepts in language. But even outside analytical philosophy, philosophy of language is important: linguistic issues take centre stage in the philosophical hermeneutics of Heidegger and Gadamer and in Derrida's Deconstruction, in phenomenology issues about privacy best formulated in linguistic terms are of crucial importance, whilst in cognitive science the debate about the nature of concepts revolves about matters of content that originated in the philosophy of language.

Subcategories

• Analysis
• Meaning
• Narrative
• Philosophers
• Pragmatics
• Research Groups
• Theories of Reference

Resources in This Category

• Bibliography of Work in the Philosophy of Language

  http://liinwww.ira.uka.de/bibliography/Ai/rht.html
  Browsable and searchable database of works pertaining to the philosophy of language. Maintained by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

• History of the Philosophy of Language

  http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Philosophy_of_language
  New World Encyclopedia's overview and history of the philosophy of language.

• Interview with John Searle on the Philosophy of Language

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOlJZabio3g&feature=related
  Bryan Magee speaking with John Searle and discussing the philosophy of language. Part 1 of a 4 part series.

• Philosophy of Language in Classical China

  http://www.philosophy.hku.hk/ch/lang.htm
  Historical overview by Chad Hansen of interpretations of language in the major schools of philosophical thought in classical China (up to the Han dynasty).

• Pragmatism and the Philosophy of Language

  http://www.ditext.com/macbeth/macbeth.html
  Wide-ranging article by Danielle MacBeth. From the Wilfrid Sellars' archive.

• Structural Linguistics and Formal Semantics

  http://jarda.peregrin.cz/mybibl/PDFTxt/327.pdf
  Article by Jaroslav Peregrin, discussing to what extent Chomsky's views displace Saussure's.

• Wikipedia - Philosophy of Language

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_language
  Acknowledges difficulties in defining the field but suggests a focus mainly on questions of meaning and truth.

Related Categories

• Home > Science > Social Sciences > Linguistics
• Home > Science > Social Sciences > Communication > Rhetoric
• Home > Society > Philosophy > Philosophy of Logic
• Home > Society > Transgendered > Academic > Pronouns

Other Languages

• Spanish
• French

 

Home > Society > Philosophy > Philosophy of Language

 

---

 

Thanks to DMOZ, which built a great web directory for nearly two decades and freely shared it with the web. About us