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This book calls for the institution of an African feminist philosophy of language, challenging existing debates and encouraging a move away from the Western gaze.The book begins with an analysis of the philosophical context of African feminism, and a call for the decolonization of epistemological discourse. Oyeleye then goes on to consider how indigenous patriarchies play out in the cultural reality of the Yorùbá in particular, ontologically unpacking the nature of woman as expressed in language, especially in myths and proverbs. Challenging the derogatory language found in proverbs which entrench patriarchal oppression, the author advocates for feminist postproverbials: new proverbs which draw on old traditions but reconstruct the space of woman in a new, egalitarian rhetorical tradition. The author concludes by outlining the conditions necessary for African feminist philosophers to consider language as a decolonizing space which can help to push through the agenda of social change.This book will be an important resource for researchers from across the fields of gender and women studies, feminist philosophy, philosophy of language, cultural studies, and African studies.

This book provides beginners with a sense of the questions and methods that make up the philosophy of language. The first four chapters develop the idea that language is a system that allows us to exchange information with each other, and the second four chapters explore the idea that language is a tool we can use to perform actions, like promising, insulting, and socially positioning ourselves.The first part of the book traces an arc connecting questions like: What is language? Where does meaning come from? How do we use meanings to send messages to each other? The second part of the book takes up questions like: Does pornography silence women? What is offensive about slurs? What do we lose when languages go extinct? With a glossary of key terms, questions for reflection, and suggestions for further reading, Philosophy of Language: The Basics is the place to start for anyone who is curious about how high the seas of language rise.

Du langage et de l'humanité, tels sont les concepts clés qui structurent la problématique et le contenu des textes présents dans cet ouvrage.Pour mener un raisonnement en philosophie, la structure du langage obéit à un ensemble de principes dont la mise en application rigoureuse débouche sur la validité et la pertinence de ce qui y est dit. Pour cela, quand on parle d'humain en philosophie, le discours qui véhicule ce qui se dit n'a de valeur objective qu'en fonction de la méthodologie qui structure l'énonciation de son discours. Ainsi, la structuration logique du langage philosophique détermine la discipline à laquelle est astreint tout chercheur dont l'ambition est d'énoncer un discours sur le réel ou l'humain, à partir des canons d'une méthodologie qu'on pourrait également trouver en mathématique.

Hiding in Plain Sight is a captivating exploration of the intricate relationship between language and the concealed order of human existence. Drawing on existentialist philosophy, literature, poetry, etymology and historical analysis, it delves into the hidden significance of everyday words and the powerful impact they have on our understanding of the world and our place within it. Journey into the heart of language to reveal its power in shaping our existence and perception of reality.

Austinian Themes offers a reconstruction of philosophical views on several themes developed by J. L. Austin. Exploring Austin's work in detail through a series of thematically organized chapters, Marina Sbisà draws on both published work as well as unpublished manuscript notes to offer a defence of Austin's speech act theory, characterized by a specific notion of illocution, against some important criticisms. Sbisà offers a reconstruction of Austin's responsibility-based conception of action drawing on his remarks on acts and actions in How to Do Things with Words and in later papers. Exploring Austin's contributions to epistemology and the philosophy of perception (including his realist stance, anti-scepticism, and presentational view of perception), Sbisà analyses the roles that he assigns to knowledge in the dynamics of assertion. On the theme of truth, Austin's claims are expounded and explained as worthy of reassessment. Other chapters explore the ways in which Austin deals with sense, reference,'family resemblances', truth-falsity assessments, and context-dependence. Austin's most famous statement of method, as outlining a'linguistic phenomenology', is cast as analogous to Husserl's phenomenology in adopting an epoché which isolates language (rather than consciousness), a reading which helps to clarify several characteristic positions adopted by Austin. On metaphilosophical themes, Sbisà analyses the notion of ordinariness, distinguishing it from common sense and the endorsement of the'Linguistic Turn', approaching it instead in terms of the by-default nature of the social bond and conversational cooperation. Various recurrent aspects of Austin's philosophy are illuminated: the opposition to dichotomies, the attention paid to intersubjectivity, the commitment to a'sober'philosophy, and a strong sense of human situatedness.

This book is about rules, and especially about human capability to create, maintain and follow rules, as a root of what makes us humans different from other animals. The leading idea is that scrutinizing this capability is able to tell us who we humans are and what kinds of lives we live. It elaborates Wilfrid Sellars'visionary observation that “to say that man is a rational animal, is to say that man is a creature not of habits, but of rules”; and it builds on the ideas of Sellars'and Brandom's inferentialism, in a novel naturalistic way.The main tenet of inferentialism is that our language games are essentially rule-governed and that meanings are inferential roles. Jaroslav Peregrin sees the task of reconciliation of inferentialism and naturalism as centered around the problem of naturalization of rules. He argues that the most primitive form of a rule is a cluster of normative attitudes. We humans are specific by our tendency to assume peculiar attitudes to what we do, and to do so in a specific way, which turns the attitudes into “normative” ones. This self-reflective structure characterizes our ability to build systems of interconnected rules, which have come to constitute our natural niche. Furthermore, Peregrin shows how our most important system of rules – that constitutive of our language – helped to lead us to our current position of rule-following, ultra-social, rational, and discursive creatures.Normative Species will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, social ontology, cultural evolution and cognitive science.

In Europe, and later in the United States, the revitalization of the philosophy of language emerged from the need to address certain perplexities concerning formal disciplines and to work out certain complexities found within philosophy. In Uruguay, philosophy of language began with Carlos Vaz Ferreira as an analysis of the common and argumentative uses of language but then expanded to address typically philosophical questions. Edited by Carlos Enrique Caorsi and Ricardo J. Navia, Philosophy of Language in Uruguay: Language, Meaning, and Philosophy demonstrates the different directions in which philosophy of language has developed in Uruguay in the last twenty years, giving a representative picture of how philosophical approaches from a linguistic perspective have developed in this Latin American country. Uruguayan philosophy has a very small international presence, but it has long produced works within the philosophical explorations of language that are worthy of being better known. The contributors dissect these explorations through epistemology, linguistics, argumentation, and cognitive sciences to discover how philosophers of language such as Vaz Ferreira have grown to understand the complexities of language and how it affects us today.

This book is a collection of 15 essays on important themes in Wittgenstein's philosophy, divided into three sections. The first section is about philosophy of language, in particular Wittgenstein's key idea of linguistic normativity. The second section is mainly concerned with important Wittgensteinian contributions to the philosophy of mind and action: his analysis of sensation language, the concept of understanding, the explanation of human behaviour and the concept of knowledge. The final section focusses on questions of value, mainly in aesthetics, but also in ethics and religion.

Mit dem kognitiven Metaphernansatz haben George Lakoff und Mark Johnson zum ersten Mal darauf hingewiesen, dass die Metapher eine gewichtige Rolle bei Gewinnung und Vermittlung von Erkenntnissen spielt. Unsere Wissensbestände sind metaphorisch-analogisch strukturiert und die sprachlichen Metaphern stellen sowohl deren Folge als auch Indikator dar. Der Band geht auf eine empirische Analyse von Fachtexten aus der Computerzeitschrift CHIP zurück und überprüft die Gültigkeit der kognitiven Metapherntheorie im Bereich der wissenschaftlichen Begriffsbildung. Das System metaphorischer Konzepte in Fachtexten wird auf Makro- und Mikroebene analysiert. Ein Funktionsmodell zur Gewinnung und Vermittlung von Erkenntnissen wird entwickelt, um die kognitive und kommunikative Rolle der Metapher in Fachkommunikation herauszustellen.

In Timothie Bright and the Origins of Early Modern Shorthand, J.D. Fleming brings together two areas of sixteenth-century intellectual history. One is the period emergence of artificial systems for verbatim shorthand notation—a crucial episode in the history of information. The other is the ancient medical discourse of melancholy humour, or black bile. Timothie Bright (1550–1615), physician and priest, prompts the juxtaposition. For he was the author, not only of the period's original shorthand manual—Characterie (1588)—but also of the first book in English on the dark humour: The Treatise of Melancholy (1586).Bright's account of melancholy involves a cybernetic phenomenology of the human. Essentially, we are psyches (souls or minds). We are sealed off from our bodies, operating them as automata across an interface. Psychological presence, for Bright, is illusion and pathology. Engrossing performances or representations therefore bring great danger, and so does the doctrine of predestination—less for its content than its typical delivery. Painful preaching was indispensable in sixteenth-century English Protestantism. But it falls foul of Bright's proscriptions. These are followed by his publication of the first known system for verbatim shorthand notation since antiquity, its technique heavily inflected toward a vocabulary of the pulpit. The passionate, oral performance of the inspired preacher receives an unprecedented textual preservative—and prophylactic. Bright's technology of information serves his phenomenology of alienation.This book will be of interest to students and scholars of the early modern period, the tradition of melancholy, and the history of information—as theory, and technology.

What sorts of alien languages can there be? And might reality be such that some alien language represents reality better than familiar languages do? Alien languages are here languages that use different kinds of semantic tools than any familiar languages use. The question of the existence of alien languages is interesting in itself: what kinds of languages are possible? But attending to the issue of alien languages also problematizes the relationship between language and reality, and highlights the possibility that reality could have a fundamentally different structure than we otherwise take it to have. Despite the foundational significance of these questions, they have received virtually no explicit attention in the literature. But the book brings up and criticizes existing contemporary work that promises to be at least indirectly relevant. A main claim of the book is that alien languages are possible and that we should be alert to the possibility that reality has alien structure and is best described by an alien language. The book also raises other possibilities regarding this debate. Maybe we should not say that the world has either kind of structure but can be equally well described using either kind of languages.

This Handbook represents a collective exploration of the emerging field of applied philosophy of language. The volume covers a broad range of areas where philosophy engages with linguistic aspects of our social world, including such hot topics as dehumanizing speech, dogwhistles, taboo language, pornography, appropriation, implicit bias, speech acts, and the ethics of communication. An international line-up of contributors adopt a variety of approaches and methods in their investigation of these linguistic phenomena, drawing on linguistics and the human and social sciences as well as on different philosophical subdisciplines. The aim is to map out fruitful areas of research and to stimulate discussion with thought-provoking essays by leading and emerging philosophers.

Beyond Language (Oltre il Linguaggio) is one of Italian philosopher Emmanuele Severino's major works, wrestling with whether it's possible to think meaningfully outside of the restrictions of language. Increasingly recognised as a truly foundational thinker in the formation of contemporary theory, Severino's ideas around self-expression, forms of communication and the limitations of language continue are brought to the fore in this book. Beyond Language specifically opens the door to the themes that Severino developed in his later works, including the concrete meaning of self-being and the decline of language. The depth and breadth of Severino's philosophical insight is as profound today as it was when first penned in 1992, making this first English translation of a key work in the history of continental philosophy crucial reading for those engaged with contemporary theory.

Wu's book provides an innovative perspective on, and recommendations for, the major aspects of second language (L2) teaching from a Hegelian anthro-philosophical perspective. Language is social in nature and is related to the larger social milieu. Hegelian philosophy of language complements existing research and theories on L2 learning by not only equipping them with a systematic framework but also broadening their scope. In Hegelian philosophy, language not only has its individual and interpersonal dimensions but is also related to the community, society, and morality. The Hegelian perspective also suggests a number of functions of L2 which have either been neglected or rejected by L2 researchers. This book highlights these neglected elements such as intersubjectivity, mutual recognition, universalization and objectivization of inner subjectivity of individuals, as well as moral enhancement. These concepts generate insights on the teaching and learning of L2. Wu's volume also covers how the Hegelian anthro-philosophical perspective can help to re-interpret research results on L2 learner characteristics that are related to L2 learning to date such as L2 identity and autonomy. The book offers an alternative research paradigm, teaching philosophy, pedagogical implications, and suggestions for scholars, practitioners, and students in the professional field of L2 teaching.

Living in Words: Literature, Autobiographical Language, and the Composition of Selfhood pursues three main questions: What role does literature play in the constitution of a human being? What is the connection between the language we see at work in imaginative fiction and the language we develop to describe ourselves? And is something more powerful than just description at work -- that is, does self-descriptive or autobiographical language itself play an active role in shaping and solidifying our identities? This adventurous book suggests that interdisciplinary work interweaving philosophy and literature can answer these questions. Main sections investigate the relational model of the self derived from American pragmatism, the sense of rightness that can attach to descriptions of ourselves and our actions, the analogy between interpreting works of art and the interpretation of persons, the special power of literature as a self-compositional tool and the'architecture'of self-narratives and the corresponding growth of self-understanding, what we can learn from cautionary tales concerning the tragic lack of self-knowledge, the possibility of'rewriting'and'rereading'the self, and overall, the assembly of real-life structures of self-definition through our reflective engagement with literature. Throughout, the book develops a model of active, self-constitutive literary reading that provides language for, and sharpens, self-individuation and sensibility. Conjoining a relational conception of selfhood to a narrative conception of self-understanding, Living in Words makes a powerful claim that aesthetic experience and our engagement with the arts is a far more serious matter in human life and society than it in some quarters is taken to be.

This work focuses on humanity's first technology--language--by placing the views of two of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century in direct confrontation on the topic of language/sign communication. It addresses the dominant role of language by the unexpected means of exposing the limits of words and signs for conveying meaning. Identifying these limits leads to the surprising realization that such limits are also precisely what make communication possible. Wittgenstein strives to shore up the foundation of meaning through a deeper understanding of the tension between rules and practice in the use of signs--while Derrida strives to expose the tension in the nature of the sign itself. This tension underscores the presence of the sign as intimately bound up with its absence. As a result, these two approaches feature contrasting roles for interpretation between a sign and its meaning. Highlighting the differences between these approaches reveals the play of hazards and benefits for language users when faced with alternative ways of understanding and accessing the power and potential of language.

This book offers readers a collection of 50 short chapter entries on topics in the philosophy of language. Each entry addresses a paradox, a longstanding puzzle, or a major theme that has emerged in the field from the last 150 years, tracing overlap with issues in philosophy of mind, cognitive science, ethics, political philosophy, and literature. Each of the 50 entries is written as a piece that can stand on its own, though useful connections to other entries are mentioned throughout the text. Readers can open the book and start with almost any of the entries, following themes of greatest interest to them. Each entry includes recommendations for further reading on the topic. Philosophy of Language: 50 Puzzles, Paradoxes, and Thought Experiments is useful as a standalone textbook, or can be supplemented by additional readings that instructors choose. The accessible style makes it suitable for introductory level through intermediate undergraduate courses, as well as for independent learners, or even as a reference for more advanced students and researchers. Key Features: Uses a problem-centered approach to philosophy of language (rather than author- or theory-centered) making the text more inviting to first-time students of the subject. Offers stand-alone chapters, allowing students to quickly understand an issue and giving instructors flexibility in assigning readings to match the themes of the course. Provides up-to-date recommended readings at the end of each chapter, or about 500 sources in total, amounting to an extensive review of the literature on each topic.

At least since Aristotle's Peri hermeneias, there has been talk of the pathos of language, of language as'symbols of the affections in the soul.'The way these affections are registered, however, suggests that they are themselves structured like language. For Aristotle and others, language is suffered before any sense can be voiced. The pathos of language thus becomes a question of how language affects the subject of speech and, in the last analysis, of how language could respond to these questions of language. Passive Voices (On the Subject of Phenomenology and Other Figures of Speech) approaches these questions, first, through readings of Augustine's investigations into language and mind and Edmund Husserl's descriptions of passive synthesis. It then traces the further resonance of Augustine's and Husserl's interventions in selected literary experiments by Georges Bataille, Franz Kafka, and Maurice Blanchot that recall Husserl and Augustine while exceeding the restrictive fictions of phenomenological'science.'In drawing out the echoes that emerge across confessional, philosophical, and fictional writings, this book exposes the ways in which speech occurs in the passive voice and affects any claim to experience.

Without language, not much else would exist: no writing, no computer – as a matter of fact, no technical or medical progress that make our lives less painful, and easier indeed; but also not some horrors that characterize our world. In fact, language is what defines humans and distinguishes them from other living beings – and is the basis of all other developments. How is it possible that something as complex and fascinating as'language'has come into being at all? How does language'work'? And how did it develop? What is common to all languages – and why are there so many? Further questions are how man began to write, and how printing developed – in which languages? Why not in any language? And does this teach us anything for further developments? In trying to answer these and other questions, we experience an exciting history of scientific research.

This book is about dance's relationship to language. It investigates how dance bodies work with the micromovements elicited by language's affective forces, and the micropolitics of the thought-sensations that arise when movement and words accompany one another within choreographic contexts. Situating itself where theory meets practice—the zone where ideas arise to be tested, the book draws on embodied research in practices within the lineages of American postmodern dance and Japanese butoh, set in dialog with affect-based philosophies and somatics. Understanding that language is felt, both when uttered and when unspoken, this book speaks to the choreographic thinking that takes place when language is considered a primary element in creating the sensorium.

Working from the phenomenological tradition, the author takes the “form of life” as the central ontological unit. We are our form of life, but as a transcendental-immanent notion. This is not directly equivalent to culture or society, but to the realisation in the world of an image of the human being shared by a given community. The question explored is the following: If the form of life is what gives us being, what role does language play? Topics explored include the concepts of propaganda and ideology. and how these terms always refer to what others say and do, never to our own actions and discourses. The central part of the book is devoted to an analysis of language itself, including propaganda, emotions, dispositions, and racism and racist discourses. The book also analyses Vladimir Putin's speeches on the occasion of the Russian war in Ukraine, the elements of their propaganda, and the justifying elements that are part of their ethical discourse, whereby actions taken or to be taken are justified as good because they are necessary from their ontological principle.

Judaic cultures have a commitment to language that is exceptional. Language in many form – texts, books and scrolls; learning, interpretation, material practices that generate material practices – are central to Judaic conduct, experience, and spirituality. In this Judaic traditions differ from philosophical and theological ones that make language secondary. Traditional metaphysics has privileged the immaterial and unchanging, as unchanging truth that language can at best convey and at worst distort. Such traditional metaphysics has come under critique since Nietzsche in ways that the author explores. Shira Wolosky argues that Judaic traditions converge with contemporary metaphysical critique rather than being its target. Focusing on the work of Derrida, Levinas, Scholem and others, the author examines traditions of Judaic interpretation against backgrounds of biblical exegesis; sign-theory as it recasts language meaning in ways that concord with Judaic textuality; negative theology as it differs in Judaic tradition from those which negate language itself; and lastly outline a discourse ethics that draws on Judaic language theory. This study is directed to students and scholars of: Judaic thought, religious studies and theology; theory of interpretation; Levinas and other modern Jewish philosophical writers, placing them in broader contexts of philosophy, theology, and language theory. It is shown how Jewish discourses on language address urgent problems of value and norms in the contemporary world that has challenged traditional anchors of truth and meaning.

James R. Shaw offers a new'bipartite'reading of Wittgenstein's treatment of rule-following and the foundations of semantics in his seminal Philosophical Investigations. On this reading, Wittgenstein's remarks are split between two logically distinct projects marked by different guiding questions, presuppositions, and methodologies. It shows how the attribution of this thoroughgoing bipartite structure resolves a number of internal tensions in the text and reveals Wittgenstein's controversial remarks on human agreement to exhibit a surprising attentiveness to, and plausible treatment of, a blurring of the semantics/metasemantics distinction arising in Wittgenstein's treatment of foundational semantic questions. Shaw then turns to an extended engagement with “Kripkensteinean” meaning skepticism. While on the reading offered, Wittgenstein never countenanced meaning skepticism, his work in the foundations of semantics gives us the resources to develop an unusual naive reply to the skeptic not yet explored in literature. Shaw argues that the Wittgensteinean reply is simple, effective, generalizable, and theoretically `light-weight', so that a theorist of almost any stripe could in principle take it up.

Die dreibändige »Philosophie der symbolischen Formen« ist das herausragende Werk, in dem Cassirer die Transformation der traditionellen Transzendentalphilosophie zur Kulturphilosophie vollzog. An die Stelle des rein rationalen Erkennens, dem in der Philosophie der Neuzeit immer ein Primat zukam, tritt die Pluralität von symbolischen Formen, in denen sich jeweils eine spezifische Spontaneität des menschlichen Geistes bekundet. Im ersten Band der PsF untersucht Cassirer die Sprache als symbolische Form, die er in einer Theorie des kulturellen Sinnverstehens systematisch begründet. Das Bemühen um eine methodische Grundlegung der Geisteswissenschaften führt Cassirer zu dem Schluß, dass die allgemeine Erkenntnistheorie in ihrer herkömmlichen Form nicht ausreicht, um die verschiedenen Grundformen des Weltverstehens bestimmt voneinander abzugrenzen. Die dreibändige Philosophie der symbolischen Formen versteht sich als eine »Formenlehre des Geistes«, die die besonderen Gesetze dieser Grundformen untersucht und ihre Stelle im Aufbau des Geistes markiert. Der erste Teil, Die Sprache, ist der Phänomenologie der sprachlichen Form gewidmet. Cassirer untersucht das Sprachproblem sowohl in der Geschichte der Philosophie als auch in der Entwicklung der Sprachwissenschaft seit Wilhelm von Humboldt. Sein Anliegen ist nicht die Betrachtung von Einzelerscheinungen, zu der die Fülle des empirischen Forschungsmaterials verleiten könnte, sondern die Erhellung des Besonderen durch einen allgemeinen Zusammenhang: die Charakteristik der reinen Sprachform. Inhalt: Das Sprachproblem in der Geschichte der Philosophie, Die Sprache in der Phase des sinnlichen Ausdrucks, Die Sprache in der Phase des anschaulichen Ausdrucks, Die Sprache als Ausdruck des begrifflichen Denkens - Die Form der sprachlichen Begriffs- und Klassenbildung, Die Sprache als Ausdruck der logischen Beziehungsformen - Die Relationsbegriffe.

This is a book-length commentary on Walter Benjamin's 1923 essay'Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers,'best known in English under the title'The Task of the Translator.'Benjamin's essay is at once an immensely attractive work for top-flight theorists of translation and comparative literature and a frustratingly cryptic work that cries out for commentary. Almost every one of the claims he makes in it seems wildly counterintuitive, because he articulates none of the background support that would help readers place it in larger literary-historical contexts: Jewish mystical traditions from Philo Judaeus's Logos-based Neoplatonism to thirteenth-century Lurianic Kabbalah; Romantic and post-Romantic esotericisms from Novalis and the Schlegels to Hölderlin and Goethe; modernist avant-garde foreclosures on'the public'and generally the communicative contexts of literature.The book is divided into 78 passages, from one to a few sentences in length. Each of the passages becomes its own commentarial unit, consisting of a Benjaminian interlinear box, a paraphrase, a commentary, and a list of other commentators who have engaged the specific passage in question. Because the passages cover the entire text of the essay in sequence, reading straight through the book provides the reader with an augmented experience of reading the essay.Robinson's commentary is key reading for scholars and postgraduate students of translation, comparative literature, and critical theory.

This is a multidisciplinary collection comprising 21 critical and personal essays and several artworks and photos that centre around the topics of language, thought (philosophies), art and existence. Seventeen essays appeared in the previous edition of this book, and I have added four new later essays. Instead of academic only essays that one would expect with this title, this collection continues with my ideology of presenting non-fiction in a creative, fresh, easy to read, simple language, with most essays driven by personal stories, thus making it accessible to a wide spectrum of readers from the scholarly to journalistic to general readers.

In Money, Language, and Thought, Marc Shell explores the interactions between linguistic and economic production as they inform discourse from Chretien de Troyes to Heidegger. Close readings of works such as the medieval grail legends, The Merchant of Venice, Goethe's Faust, and Poe's'The Gold Bug'reveal how discourse has responded to the dissociation of symbol from thing characteristic of money, and how the development of increasingly symbolic currencies has involved changes in the meaning of meaning. Pursuing his investigations into the modern era, Shell points out significant internalization of economic form in Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger. He demonstrates how literature and philosophy have been driven to account self-critically for a'money of the mind'that pervades all discourse, and concludes the book with a discomforting thesis about the cultural and political limits of literature and philosophy in the modern world.In Money, Language, and Thought, Marc Shell explores the interactions between linguistic and economic production as they inform discourse from Chretien de Troyes to Heidegger. Close readings of works such as the medieval grail legends, The Merchant of Ven