Willard Van Orman Quine was certainly the greatest analytic philosopher of the second half of the twentieth century. Born in 1908, he held the Edgar Pierce Chair of Philosophy at Harvard University from 1956 to 2000. He made highly important contributions to such areas as mathematical logic, set theory, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of logic. His best known works include "From a Logical Point of View", "Ontological Relativity" and other essays, and his most influential Word and Object. One of Quine's central doctrines is the 'indeterminacy of translation' - the assertion that there is no objective answer to the question of what someone means by any given sentence. This view was first put forward in Word and Object and was shocking enough to draw criticisms from other leading philosophers like Noam Chomsky and Richard Rorty. Eve Gaudet argues that these controversies stem partly from Quine's ambiguities and changes of mind, and partly from his readers' misunderstandings. Gaudet dissipates the confusion by examining afresh. Quine's whole concept of 'a fact of the matter', and evaluating the contributions to the debate by Chomsky, Rorty, Friedman, Gibson and Follesdal in the light of her new interpretation. This is the first book devoted to a defence of Quine's indeterminacy of translation doctrine. Unlike many who conclude in Quine's favour, Gaudet adopts a critical and nuanced approach to Quine's texts, showing that Quine sometimes changed his positions and was not always as clear and consistent as many assume.

The recognition that cultural learning is an integral part of foreign language learning is quickly taking hold among language teachers. This book offers a practical introduction to the issues by providing descriptions of classroom practice, of curriculum innovation and of experimental courses. These are accompanied by chapters on principles of methodology, on problems in assessing cultural learning and on the implications for teacher education and society at large. Michael Byram is the author of several books on language learning and culture, including Cultural Studies in Foreign Language Education (1988), and Investigating Cultural Studies in Foreign Language Teaching (1991).

Language Turned on Itself examines what happens when language becomes self-reflexive; when language is used to talk about language. Those who think, talk and write about language are compulsive users of various metalinguistic devices, but reliance on these devices begins early: kids are told, 'That's called a "rabbit"'. It's not implausible that a primitive capacity for the meta-linguistic kicks in at the beginning stages of language acquisition. But no matter when or how frequently these devices are invoked, one thing is clear: they present theorists of language with a complex data pattern. Herman Cappelen and Ernest Lepore argue that the study of these devices and patterns is not only interesting, but also carries important consequences for other parts of philosophy.
The primary goal of this book is not to promote one theory over another. Rather, it is to present a deeply puzzling set of problems and explain their significance for other areas of philosophy. Cappelen and Lepore introduce an important, but sometimes neglected, part of the philosophy of language. Part I is devoted to presenting data about various aspects of our metalinguistic practices. In part II, the authors examine and reject the four leading metalinguistic theories, and present a new account of our use of quotation in a variety of different contexts.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE SOCIOLOGY OF LANGUAGE brings to students, researchers and practitioners in all of the social and language-related sciences carefully selected book-length publications dealing with sociolinguistic theory, methods, findings and applications. It approaches the study of language in society in its broadest sense, as a truly international and interdisciplinary field in which various approaches, theoretical and empirical, supplement and complement each other. The series invites the attention of linguists, language teachers of all interests, sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, historians etc. to the development of the sociology of language.

We are all very good at telling what states of mind we are in at a given moment. When it comes to our own present states of mind, what we say goes; an avowal such as "I'm feeling so anxious" or "I'm thinking about my next trip to Paris," it is typically supposed, tells it like it is. But why is that? Why should what I say about my present mental states carry so much more weight than what others say about them? Why should avowals be more immune to criticism and correction than other claims we make? And if avowals are not based on any evidence or observation, how could they possibly express our knowledge of our own present mental states?
Dorit Bar-On develops and defends a novel view of avowals and self-knowledge. Drawing on resources from the philosophy of language, the theory of action, epistemology, and the philosophy of mind, she offers original and systematic answers to many long-standing questions concerning our ability to know our own minds.
Bar-On proposes a Neo-Expressivist view according to which avowals are expressive acts that have truth-accessible self-ascriptions as their products. When avowing, a person directly expresses, rather than merely reports, the very mental condition that the avowal ascribes. She argues that this expressivist idea, coupled with an adequate characterization of expression and a proper separation of the semantics of avowals from their pragmatics and epistemology, explains the special status we assign to avowals. As against many expressivists and their critics, she maintains that such an expressivist explanation is consistent with a non-deflationary view of self-knowledge and a robust realism about mental states. The view that emerges preserves many insights of the most prominent contributors to the subject, while offering a new perspective on our special relationship to our own minds.

The Extent of the Literal develops a strikingly new approach to metaphor and polysemy in their relation to the conceptual structure. In a straightforward narrative style, the author argues for a reconsideration of standard assumptions concerning the notion of literal meaning and its relation to conceptual structure. She draws on neurophysiological and psychological experimental data in support of a view in which polysemy belongs to the level of words but not to the level of concepts, and thus challenges some seminal work on metaphor and polysemy within cognitive linguistics, lexical semantics and analytical philosophy.

First published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First published in 2005. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Why is it that all interpretations are possible, and none is true? That some interpretations are just, but some are false? Lecercle draws on the resources of pragmatics, literary theory and the philosophy of language to propose a new theory of literary, but also of face to face, dialogue that charts the interaction between the five participants in the fields of dialogue and/or interpretation: author, reader, text, language and encyclopaedia. Interpretation is taken through its four stages, from glossing and enigma solving to translation and intervention.

This study looks to the work of Tarski's mentors Stanislaw Lesniewski and Tadeusz Kotarbinski, and reconsiders all of the major issues in Tarski scholarship in light of the conception of Intuitionistic Formalism developed: semantics, truth, paradox, logical consequence.

Routledge Language Workbooks provide absolute beginners with practical introductions to core areas of language study. Books in the series offer comprehensive coverage of the area as well as a basis for further investigation. Each Language Workbook guides the reader through the subject using 'hands-on' language analysis, equipping them with the basic analytical skills needed to handle a wide range of data. Written in a clear and simple style, with all technical concepts fully explained, Language Workbooks can be used for independent study or as part of a taught class. Language and the Mind: is an accessible introduction to the relationship between language and mental processes covers core areas including language in the brain, language impairment, how language is acquired, how the mind stores vocabulary and how it deals with speaking, listening, reading and writing draws on a variety of real-life material employs a discovery approach that enables students to form conclusions for themselves can be used to complement existing textbook material.

The present anthology has its origin in two international conferences that were arranged at Uppsala University in August 2004: "Logicism, Intuitionism and F- malism: What has become of them?" followed by "Symposium on Constructive Mathematics." The rst conference concerned the three major programmes in the foundations of mathematics during the classical period from Frege's Begrif- schrift in 1879 to the publication of Godel' ] s two incompleteness theorems in 1931: The logicism of Frege, Russell and Whitehead, the intuitionism of Brouwer, and Hilbert's formalist and proof-theoretic programme. The main purpose of the conf- ence was to assess the relevance of these foundational programmes to contemporary philosophy of mathematics. The second conference was announced as a satellite event to the rst, and was speci cally concerned with constructive mathematics-an activebranchofmathematicswheremathematicalstatements-existencestatements in particular-are interpreted in terms of what can be effectively constructed. C- structive mathematics may also be characterized as mathematics based on intuiti- isticlogicand, thus, beviewedasadirectdescendant ofBrouwer'sintuitionism. The two conferences were successful in bringing together a number of internationally renowned mathematicians and philosophers around common concerns. Once again it was con rmed that philosophers and mathematicians can work together and that real progress in the philosophy and foundations of mathematics is possible only if they do. Most of the papers in this collection originate from the two conferences, but a few additional papers of relevance to the issues discussed at the Uppsala c- ferences have been solicited especially for this volume."

The series is a platform for contributions of all kinds to this rapidly developing field. General problems are studied from the perspective of individual languages, language families, language groups, or language samples. Conclusions are the result of a deepened study of empirical data. Special emphasis is given to little-known languages, whose analysis may shed new light on long-standing problems in general linguistics.

The first volume of the two-volume set Body, Language and Mind focuses on the concept of embodiment, understood in most general terms as "the bodily basis of phenomena such as meaning, mind, cognition and language". The volume offers a representative, multi- and interdisciplinary state-of-the-art collection of papers on embodiment and brings together a large variety of different perspectives, from cognitive linguistics, cognitive science, philosophy, psychology, semiotics and artificial intelligence. Being envisioned as a reader of sorts in theoretical and empirical research on embodiment, the book revolves around several core issues that have been addressed previously, to a large degree independently, in various disciplines. In particular the volume illustrates the diversity of notions of embodiment that has arisen in various disciplines over the last twenty years, and addresses the question how these different interpretations relate to each other, i.e. are they different aspects of or different perspectives on the same phenomena, or do they actually contradict each other? For this purpose, several aspects of cognition and language, such as phenomenal experience, perception, action, conceptualization, communication, meaning creation, social interaction and culture, are illuminated from the perspective of different theories of embodiment. The contributions are integrated through cross-connections between individual authors' papers and through an introductory essay that identifies the different strands of research, the central issues that they share, and the synergies that can be gained from addressing embodiment from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Figurative language, such as verbal irony, metaphor, hyperbole, idioms, and other forms is an increasingly important subfield within the empirical study of language comprehension and use. "Figurative Language Comprehension: Social and Cultural Influences" is an edited scholarly book that ties together recent research concerning the social and cultural influences on figurative language cognition. These influences include gender, cultural differences, economic status, and inter-group effects, among others. The effects these influences have on people's use, comprehension, and even processing of figurative language, comprise the main theme of this volume. No other book offers such a look at the social and cultural influences on a whole family of figurative forms at several levels of cognition.
This volume is of great interest to scholars and professionals in the disciplines of social and cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics, and second language acquisition, as well as cognitive and other fields of linguistics where scholars have interests in pragmatics, metaphor, symbol, discourse, and narrative. Some knowledge of the empirical and experimental methods used in language research, as well as some familiarity with theories underlying the use, comprehension, and processing of figurative language would be helpful to readers of this book.

With the advent and increasing popularity of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) and e-learning technologies, the need of "automatic assessment "and" "of" teacher/tutor support" for the two tightly intertwined activities of "comprehension" of reading materials and of "collaboration" among peers has grown significantly. In this context, a polyphonic model of discourse derived from Bakhtin s work as a paradigm is used for analyzing both general texts and CSCL conversations in a unique framework focused on different facets of textual cohesion.

As specificity of our analysis, the "individual learning" perspective is focused on the identification of reading strategies and on providing a multi-dimensional textual complexity model, whereas the "collaborative learning" dimension is centered on the evaluation of participants involvement, as well as on collaboration assessment.

Our approach based on advanced Natural Language Processing techniques provides a qualitative estimation of the learning process and enhances understanding as a mediator of learning by providing automated feedback to both learners and teachers or tutors. The main benefits are its flexibility, extensibility and nevertheless specificity for covering multiple stages, starting from reading classroom materials, to discussing on specific topics in a collaborative manner and finishing the feedback loop by verbalizing metacognitive thoughts."

This book provides a detailed analysis of two major aspects - glottalization and nasalization - of the phonology and phonetics of Coatzospan Mixtec, as well as an overview of the segmental phonology of the language. From a descriptive perspective, this work provides the first published phonetic data on Coatzospan Mixtec, one of the many underdescribed indigenous languages of the Americas. Of theoretical importance, the phonological analyses of glottalization and nasalization serve as examples of how optimality theory can be implemented in the extended treatment of a single language, in contrast to the typological emphasis of most optimality research. By focusing in detail on the whole of nasalization and glottalization systems, the book explores the implications of optimality theory for the traditional notion of underlying representation in phonological theory and motivates an extension of the mechanism of constraint conjunction to include conditional relations holding between distinct constraints in the grammar. At the same time, the phonetic analyses provide an example of a detailed treatment of the phonetic implementation of nasalization and glottalization in the Windows framework. Of special interest here is the relation between phonetic data and phonological feature specification. In particular, the data illustrate the complexity of the relationship between patterns of phonetic implementation and feature specification and lead to the conclusion that phonetic data must be interpreted in the context of the phonological system from which they are derived. This book is of interest to linguists in general, and especially to researchers in both phonology and phonetics, to thoseinterested in field work on underdescribed languages, and to those interested in Native American languages and linguistics.

The phenomenon of context dependence is so multifaceted that it is tempting to classify it as hetergenous. It is especially evident in the case of the difference between context dependence as understood in the philosophy of language and context dependence as understood in the philosophy of mind. One of the aims of the present volume is to show that as varied as the phenomenon of context dependence is, the similarities between its different manifestations are profound and undeniable. More importantly, as evidenced in a number of papers presented on the subsequent pages of this volume, a broad perspective on the phenomenon of context dependence helps us to re-apply theories devised for one of the subfields of philosophy to the other subfields. Since the connections and analogies between many uses of contextualism may not be initially obvious, keeping an open perspective and the willingness to learn from the work of others may sometimes be crucial for finding new, satisfactory solutions.

This exploration of seminal French theoretical writings approaches them as coherent philosophical fictions and brings to light their contradictory political, social and pedagogical implications and their complex historicity.;Because Lacan, Barthes, Foucault and Derrida have been so innovative and challenging in the different disciplines they worked with, their writings have been widely and selectively pillaged. But, as they well knew, ideas, methods, structures and styles of writing are never "neutral" or "innocent"; they always have pedagogical, social and political consequences. Pillaging does not neutralize those consequences; it merely allows them to operate unchosen, unquestioned and unchecked.;By replacing them in very various French contexts, this book indicates important differences between the situation of university intellectuals in France and those in England or America. Eve Tavor Bannet not only sheds new light on influential theoretical texts; she also raises questions about academic writing and about the intellectual's role in the university and in the modern world.;Eve Tavor Bannet is the author of "Scepticism, Society and the Eighteenth Century Novel".

In a systematic presentation of Johnson's views on language, Johnson on Language: An Introduction addresses the problems inherent in the formation of style, as Johnson saw them, but also contains a detailed discussion of his opinions concerning the proper responsibilities of the lexicographer. The wide-ranging discussion takes in the linguistic controversies of classical antiquity, the resumption and elaboration of various classical ideas in the Renaissance period, and the way in which Johnson's own ideas have been shaped by his reading of important documents of these eras.

In its most specific form, deconstruction is a mode of philosophical and literary analysis, derived from the work of French philosopher, Jacques Derrida, which questions the most basic philosophical categories or concepts.
Since deconstruction has traditionally been an activity based in philosophy, it has required, from the outset, explanation and explication. Indeed, one could argue that deconstruction has to a considerable extent been formed by critical accounts of it. This collection will reprint a cross section of these important works. The result is a set which charts the ways in which deconstruction is conceptualised and demonstrates the impact it has had on a wide range of traditions - areas as diverse as psychoanalysis, law, gender studies and architecture.

This historically-informed critical assessment of Dummett's account of abstract objects, examines in detail some of the Fregean presuppositions of Dummett's account whilst also engaging with phenomenological approaches and recent work on the problem of abstract entities.