Word and World
Practice and the Foundations of Language

Proposes a new account of the nature of language, founded upon an original interpretation of Wittgenstein.

Patricia Hanna (Author), Bernard Harrison (Author)

9780521537445, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 15 December 2003

432 pages
22.8 x 15.2 x 2.8 cm, 0.576 kg

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.

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.

Subject Areas: Analytical philosophy & Logical Positivism [HPCF5], Philosophy of language [CFA], Linguistics [CF]