Language Use: A Philosophical Investigation Into The Basic Notions Of Pragmatics (swansea Studies In Philosophy)

Language Use offers a philosophical examination of the basic conceptual framework of pragmatic theory, and contrasts this framework with detailed descriptions of our everyday practices of language use. While the results should be highly relevant to pragmatics, the investigation is not a contribution to pragmatic theory. Drawing on Ludwig Wittgenstein's approach to philosophical problems, Language Use brings out the relevance of Wittgenstein's methods to fundamental problems in central pragmatic fields of research such as deixis, implicatures, speech acts and presuppositions. Front Matter....Pages i-xiv Introduction....Pages 1-12 Front Matter....Pages 13-13 Language and Context....Pages 15-24 The Pragmatic Account of Deixis....Pages 25-30 Context-Dependence....Pages 31-44 Ironical Use of Indexical Expressions....Pages 45-49 Front Matter....Pages 51-51 The Semantic Reading and Conversational Implicature....Pages 53-65 Literal Meaning....Pages 66-75 The Pragmatic Notion of Order....Pages 76-83 General Principles of Rationality as a Basis for Language Use....Pages 84-98 Formal Pragmatics....Pages 99-106 Front Matter....Pages 107-107 The Speaker-Hearer Scheme of Communication....Pages 109-119 Speech Acts versus Language Games....Pages 120-135 Language vs Languages and Philosophy vs Linguistics....Pages 136-152 Intentions and Beliefs as Conditions for Use....Pages 153-170 The Semantic Reading and the Notion of Indirect Speech....Pages 171-182 Front Matter....Pages 183-183 The Notion of Presupposition in Pragmatics....Pages 185-190 Presuppositions and Methods of Linguistics....Pages 191-208 Defeasibility and the Projection Problem....Pages 209-218 Back Matter....Pages 219-240 What is the relationship between the meaning of a sentence, our abilities of inference, and the practical use of the sentence in everyday circumstances? The answer from pragmatics, which is scrutinized in this work, is that meaning and inference guide our practical use of language. Drawing on Ludwig Wittgenstein's approach to philosophical problems, Language Use offers a detailed examination of the conceptual framework of central pragmatic fields of research such as deixis, implicatures, speech acts and presuppositions, and contrasts this framework with investigations into numerous examples of everyday practices of language use. The originality of the book lies in its treatment of general theoretical issues in terms of descriptions of examples and particular cases. Pär Segerdahl. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 227-230) And Index.