The Poverty of Structuralism is the first in a sequence of volumes which examine in turn the basic ideas of Saussure, Marx and Freud, and analyse the way in which they have been developed and applied to art, culture and modern textual theory. The text offers a critical introduction to the structuralist foundations of modern literary theory. It gives an account of the way such foundations have been developed, twisted and distorted to become part of the language that contemporary literary and cultural theoreticians use. It also addresses some of the fundamental issues about language and society that are presupposed by the often difficult language of modern literary and cultural theory.

In this book, Aladdin M. Yaqub describes a simple conception of truth and shows that it yields a semantical theory that accommodates the whole range of our seemingly conflicting intuitions about truth. Yaqub's conception takes the Tarskian biconditionals (such as "The sentence 'Johannes loved Clara' is true if and only if Johannes loved Clara") as correctly and completely defining the notion of truth. The semantical theory, which is called the revision theory, that emerges from this conception paints a metaphysical picture of truth as a property whose applicability is given by a revision process rather than by a fixed extension. The main advantage of this revision process is its ability to explain why truth seems in many cases almost redundant, in others substantial, and yet in others paradoxical (as in the famous Liar). Yaqub offers a comprehensive defense of the revision theory of truth by developing consistent and adequate formal semantics for languages in which all sorts of problematic sentences (Liar and company) can be constructed. He also gives a detailed critical exposition of the proposals of Herzberger, Gupta, and Belnap. Yaqub concludes by introducing a logic of truth that further demonstrates the adequacy of the revision theory. The Liar Speaks the Truth starts with a basic and intuitive understanding of the notion of truth and ends with a complex logic of truth. The book will interest students of logic, truth theory, formal semantics, and philosophy of language.

First published in 1990, this book argues that any theory of language constructs its 'object' by separating 'relevant' from 'irrelevant' phenomena - excluding the latter. This leaves a 'remainder' which consists of the untidy, creative part of how language is used - the essence of poetry and metaphor. Although this remainder can never be completely formalised, it must be fully recognised by any true account of language and thus this book attempts the first 'theory of the remainder'. As such, whether it is language or the speaker who speaks is dealt with, leading to an analysis of how all speakers are 'violently' constrained in their use of language by social and psychological realties.

Saussure as a linguist and Wittgenstein as a philosopher of language are arguably the two most important figures in the development of twentieth-century linguistic thought. By pointing out what their ideas have in common, in spite of emanating from very different intellectual sources, this study breaks new ground.

Gilbert Ryle was one of the most important and yet misunderstood philosophers of the Twentieth Century. Long unavailable, Collected Essays 1929-1968: Collected Papers Volume 2 stands as testament to the astonishing breadth of Ryle's philosophical concerns. This volume showcases Ryle's deep interest in the notion of thinking and contains many of his major pieces, including his classic essays 'Knowing How and Knowing That', 'Philosophical Arguments', 'Systematically Misleading Expressions', and 'A Puzzling Element in the Notion of Thinking'. He ranges over an astonishing number of topics, including feelings, pleasure, sensation, forgetting and concepts and in so doing hones his own philosophical stance, steering a careful path between behaviourism and Cartesianism. Together with the Collected Papers Volume 1 and the new edition of The Concept of Mind, these outstanding essays represent the very best of Ryle's work. Each volume contains a substantial preface by Julia Tanney, and both are essential reading for any student of twentieth-century philosophies of mind and language. Gilbert Ryle (1900 -1976) was Waynflete Professor of Metaphysics and Fellow of Magdalen College Oxford, an editor of Mind, and a president of the Aristotelian Society. Julia Tanney is Senior Lectuer at the University of Kent, and has held visiting positions at the University of Picardie and Paris-Sorbonne.

The first truly introductory text on Lyotard, this book situates Lyotard's interventions in the postmodern debate in the wider context of his rethinking of the politics of representation. Bill Readings examines Lyotard's relationship to structuralism, Marxism and semiotics, and contrasts his work with the literary deconstruction of Paul de Man; he positions Lyotard's work so as to draw out the implications of poststructurlaism's attention to difference in reading. Lyotard's willingness to question the political and examine the relationship between art and politics is shown to undermine the charge that deconstruction abdicates political and social articulation.

This work investigates problems about mind, meaning and mathematics rooted in preconceptions of language. It deals in particular with problems which are connected with our tendency to be misled by certain prevailing views and preconceptions about language. Philosophical claims made by theorists of meaning are scrutinized and shown to be connected with common views about the nature of certain mathematical notions and methods. Drawing in particular on Wittgenstein's ideas, the author demonstrates a strategy for tracing out and resolving conceptual and philosophical problems. By a critical examination of examples from different areas of philosophy, he shows that many problems arise through the transgression of the limits of the use of technical concepts and formal methods. Many 'prima facie' different kinds of problems are shown to have common roots, and should thus be dealt with and resolved together. Such an approach is usually prevented by the influence of traditional philosophical terminology and classification. The results of this investigation make it clear that the received ways of subdividing the subject matter of philosophy often conceal the roots of the problem.

This book, originally published in 1987, considers how the science of linguistics creates its own objects of study. It argues that language is the one essential tool in the 'social construction of reality' - the way in which our environment as we perceive and respond to it is actually created by the cultural constructs we bring to bear on it - and that it is also the means by which this reality, once constructed, is preserved and transmitted from person to person and from generation to generation. Hence it is entirely appropriate to refer to the linguistic construction of reality.

This book, first published in 1990, combines an introduction to speech-act theory as developed by J. L. Austin with a survey of critical essays that have adapted Austin's thought for literary analysis. Speech-act theory emphasizes the social reality created when speakers agree that their language is performative - Austin's term for utterances like: "we hereby declare" or "I promise" that produce rather than describe what they name. In contrast to formal linguistics, speech-act theory insists on language's active prominence in the organization of collective life. The first section of the text concentrates on Austin's determination to situate language in society by demonstrating the social conventions manifest in language. The second and third parts of the book discuss literary critics' responses to speech-act theory's socialisation of language, which have both opened new understandings of textuality in general and stimulated new interpretations of individual works. This book will be of interest to students of linguistics and literary theory.

This book, originally published in 1989 discusses an issue central to all philosophical argument - the relation between persuasion and truth. The techniques of persuasion are indirect and not always fully transparent. Whether philosophers and theoreticians are for or against the use of rhetoric, they engage in rhetorical practice none the less. Focusing on Plato, Descartes, Kant, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Wittgenstein, this book uncovers philosophical rhetoric at work and reminds us of the rhetorical arena in which philosophical writings are produced and considered.

Specifically designed to make the philosophy of mind intelligible to those not trained in philosophy, this book provides a concise overview for students and researchers in the cognitive sciences. Emphasizing the relevance of philosophical work to investigations in other cognitive sciences, this unique text examines such issues as the meaning of language, the mind-body problem, the functionalist theories of cognition, and intentionality. As he explores the philosophical issues, Bechtel draws connections between philosophical views and theoretical and experimental work in such disciplines as cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, linguistics, neuroscience, and anthropology.

Specifically designed to make the philosophy of mind intelligible to those not trained in philosophy, this book provides a concise overview for students and researchers in the cognitive sciences. Emphasizing the relevance of philosophical work to investigations in other cognitive sciences, this unique text examines such issues as the meaning of language, the mind-body problem, the functionalist theories of cognition, and intentionality. As he explores the philosophical issues, Bechtel draws connections between philosophical views and theoretical and experimental work in such disciplines as cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, linguistics, neuroscience, and anthropology.

Stories told within institutions play a powerful role, helping to define not only the institution itself, but also its individual members. How do institutions use stories? How do those stories both preserve the past and shape the future? To what extent does narrative construct both collective and individual identity?
Charlotte Linde's unique and far-reaching study addresses these questions by looking at the interplay of narratives, memory, and identity in a large insurance company. Her detailed ethnography looks at the role of stories within the institution and how they are employed by its members in both private and group settings. Analyzing the re-telling of certain key stories, she shows how the formation of "core" stories and their multiple re-tellings and modifications provide a means of formulating and promoting a cohesive group identity -- which in turn shapes the stories and identities of the individuals within the collective. Linde also looks at silences, and how stories not told also convey their version of the past.
Working the Past shows how stories that might otherwise be seen as part of mundane daily life are in fact utterly essential to the formation and maintenance of individual and group identity. Her original research will appeal to those interested in narrative studies, linguistics, anthropology, sociology, and institutional memory.

Language of Fiction was the first book of criticism by the renowned novelist and critic David Lodge. His uniquely informed perspective - he was already the author of three successful novels at the time of its first publication in 1966 - and lucid exposition meant that the work proved a landmark of literary criticism, not least because it succeeded in communicating a radically new vision of English literature to a readership that reached well beyond the bounds of the academy. Now reissued with a new foreword, this major work from the pen of one of England's finest living writers is essential reading for all those who care about the creation and appreciation of literature.

Paul Ricoeur is widely regarded as one of the most distinguished philosophers of our time. In The Rule of Metaphor he seeks 'to show how language can extend itself to its very limits, forever discovering new resonances within itself'. Recognizing the fundamental power of language in constructing the world we perceive, it is a fruitful and insightful study of how language affects how we understand the world, and is also an indispensable work for all those seeking to retrieve some kind of meaning in uncertain times.

The book is about logical analysis of natural language. Since we humans communicate by means of natural language, we need a tool that helps us to understand in a precise manner how the logical and formal mechanisms of natural language work. Moreover, in the age of computers, we need to communicate both with and through computers as well. Transparent Intensional Logic is a tool that is helpful in making our communication and reasoning smooth and precise. It deals with all kinds of linguistic context in a fully compositional and anti-contextual way.

Victoria Welby (1837-1912) dedicated her research to the relationship between signs and values. She exchanged ideas with important exponents of the language and sign sciences, such as Charles S. Peirce and Charles S. Ogden. She examined themes she believed crucially important both in the use of signs and in reflection on signs. But Welby's research can also be understood in ideal dialogue with authors she could never have met in real life, such as Mikhail Bakhtin, Susanne Langer, and Genevieve Vaughan.

Welby contends that signifying cannot be constrained to any one system, type of sign, language, field of discourse, or area of experience. On the contrary, it is ever more developed, enhanced, and rigorous, the more it develops across different fields, disciplines, and areas of experience. For example, to understand meaning, Welby evidences the advantage of translating it into another word even from the same language or resorting to metaphor to express what would otherwise be difficult to conceive.

Welby aims for full awareness of the expressive potential of signifying resources. Her reflections make an important contribution to problems connected with communication, expression, interpretation, translation, and creativity.

The area of research on printed word recognition has been one of the most active in the field of experimental psychology for well over a decade. However, notwithstanding the energetic research effort and despite the fact that there are many points of consensus, major controversies still exist.

This volume is particularly concerned with the putative relationship between language and reading. It explores the ways by which orthography, phonology, morphology and meaning are interrelated in the reading process. Included are theoretical discussions as well as reviews of experimental evidence by leading researchers in the area of experimental reading studies. The book takes as its primary issue the question of the degree to which basic processes in reading reflect the structural characteristics of language such as phonology and morphology. It discusses how those characteristics can shape a language's orthography and affect the process of reading from word recognition to comprehension.

Contributed by specialists, the broad-ranging mix of articles and papers not only gives a picture of current theory and data but a view of the directions in which this research area is vigorously moving.

This book explores how grammatical structure is related to meaning. The meaning of a phrase clearly depends on its constituent words and how they are combined. But how does structure contribute to meaning in natural language? Does combining adjectives with nouns (as in 'brown dog') differ semantically from combining verbs with adverbs (as in 'barked loudly')? What is the significance of combining verbs with names and quantificational expressions (as in 'Fido chased every cat')? In addressing such questions, Paul Pietroski develops a novel conception of linguistic meaning according to which the semantic contribution of combining expressions is simple and uniform across constructions. Drawing on work at the heart of contemporary debates in linguistics and philosophy, the author argues that Donald Davidson's treatment of action sentences as event descriptions should be viewed as an instructive special case of a more general semantic theory. The unified theory covers a wide range of examples, including sentences that involve quantification, plurality, descriptions of complex causal processes, and verbs that take sentential complements. Professor Pietroski also provides fresh ways of thinking about much discussed semantic generalizations that seem to reflect innately determined aspects of human languages. Designed to be accessible to anyone with a basic knowledge of elementary logic, Events and Semantic Architecture will interest a wide range of scholars in linguistics, philosophy, and cognitive science.

This thought-provoking book initiates a dialogue among scholars in rhetoric and hermeneutics in many areas of the humanities. Twenty leading thinkers explore the ways these two powerful disciplines inform each other and influence a wide variety of intellectual fields. Walter Jost and Michael J. Hyde organize pivotal topics in rhetoric and hermeneutics with originality and coherence, dividing their book into four sections: Locating the Disciplines; Inventions and Applications; Arguments and Narratives; and Civic Discourse and Critical Theory. Contributors to this volume include Hans-Georg Gadamer (one of whose pieces is here translated into English for the first time), Paul Ricoeur, Gerald L. Bruns, Charles Altieri, Richard E. Palmer, Calvin O. Schrag,.Victoria Kahn, Eugene Garver, Michael Leff, Nancy S. Streuver, Wendy Olmsted, David Tracy, Donald G. Marshall, Allen Scult, Rita Copeland, William Rehg, and Steven Mailloux. For readers across the humanities, the book demonstrates the usefulness of rhetorical and hermeneutic approaches in literary, philosophical, legal, religious, and political thinking. With its stimulating new perspectives on the revival and interrelation of both rhetoric and hermeneutics, this collection is sure to serve as a benchmark for years to come.

This monograph details a new solution to an old problem of metaphysics. It presents an improved version of Ostrich Nominalism to solve the Problem of Universals. This innovative approach allows one to resolve the different formulations of the Problem, which represents an important meta-metaphysical achievement.In order to accomplish this ambitious task, the author appeals to the notion and logic of ontological grounding. Instead of defending Quine's original principle of ontological commitment, he proposes the principle of grounded ontological commitment. This represents an entirely new application of grounding. Some metaphysicians regard Ostrich Nominalism as a rejection of the problem rather than a proper solution to it. To counter this, the author presents solutions for each of the formulations. These include: the problem of predication, the problem of abstract reference, and the One Over Many as well as the Many Over One and the Similar but Different variants. This book will appeal to anyone interested in contemporary metaphysics. It will also serve as an ideal resource to scholars working on the history of philosophy. Many will recognize in the solution insights resembling those of traditional philosophers, especially of the Middle Ages.

It is commonly assumed that we conceive of the past and the future as symmetrical. In this book, Fabrizio Cariani develops a new theory of future-directed discourse and thought that shows that our linguistic and philosophical conceptions of the past and future are, in fact, fundamentally different. Future thought and talk, Cariani suggests, are best understood in terms of a systematic analogy with counterfactual thought and talk, and are not just mirror images of the past. Cariani makes this case by developing detailed formal semantic theories as well as by advancing less technical views about the nature of future-directed judgment and prediction. His book addresses in a thought-provoking way several important debates in contemporary philosophy, and his synthesis of parallel threads of research will benefit scholars in the philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology, linguistics and cognitive science.

Neil Powell fuses a critical look at language with an exploration of the political and existential problems facing humankind... The Storyteller is tired of telling stories about Love, God and Beauty. With the invention of Eric Crawford, an English teacher at Davenport College, he explores what is required to tell new stories. As a result, a tantalising world of freedom beckons. This encompasses Eric's teaching, family and romantic life, the explosive relationship he has with troubled student, David Spurling, a protest movement about the role of Art, and a violent crime on college grounds. The Storyteller's control of Eric's life conversely makes the Storyteller realise the power language has over him. Reminding him that language is a public medium, not the exclusive tool of an authority or author. A stylistically innovative novel, at turns both a philosophy and black comedy, The Office of Future Storytelling, examines the relationship of language to individual identity and freedom. It argues that the stories we need are those which demonstrate our unequivocal connection to the world.

Philosophy of language is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature of meaning, the relationship of language to reality, and the ways in which we use, learn, and understand language.
The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Language provides a comprehensive and up-to-date survey of the field, charting its key ideas and movements, and addressing contemporary research and enduring questions in the philosophy of language. Unique to this Companion is clear coverage of research from the related disciplines of formal logic and linguistics, and discussion of the applications in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and philosophy of mind.

Organized thematically, the Companion is divided into seven sections: Core Topics; Foundations of Semantics; Parts of Speech; Methodology; Logic for Philosophers of Language; Philosophy of Language for the Rest of Philosophy; and Historical Perspectives.

Comprised of 70 never-before-published essays from leading scholars--including Sally Haslanger, Jeffrey King, Sally McConnell-Ginet, Rae Langton, Kit Fine, John MacFarlane, Jeff Pelletier, Scott Soames, Jason Stanley, Stephen Stich and Zoltan Gendler Szabo--the Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Language promises to be the most comprehensive and authoritative resource for students and scholars alike.

A pervasive aspect of human communication and sociality is argumentation: the practice of making and criticizing reasons in the context of doubt and disagreement. Argumentation underpins and shapes the decision-making, problem-solving, and conflict management which are fundamental to human relationships. However, argumentation is predominantly conceptualized as two parties arguing pro and con positions with each other in one place. This dyadic bias undermines the capacity to engage argumentation in complex communication in contemporary, digital society. This book offers an ambitious alternative course of inquiry for the analysis, evaluation, and design of argumentation as polylogue: various actors arguing over many positions across multiple places. Taking up key aspects of the twentieth-century revival of argumentation as a communicative, situated practice, the polylogue framework engages a wider range of discourses, messages, interactions, technologies, and institutions necessary for adequately engaging the contemporary entanglement of argumentation and complex communication in human activities.