JH2 Philosophy of Language

In this course we start from the classic works in philosophy of language by Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell, each of which investigates of the nature of language, meaning, reference and related topics. We look next at some contemporary challenges to those views, especially due to Saul Kripke and Ruth Barcan Marcus, then to the speech-act theory of Austin, the pragmatics of Grice, and some modern developments including the phenomenon of slurs. We conclude with a brief look at Donald Davidson - author of a theory connecting meaning with linguistic behaviour - or those of W. V. Quine or Ludwig Wittgenstein, each of which had their distinctive doubts about the idea of a theory of meaning.

black and white historical portrait photograph of Frege, an old man with receding long white har and long white beard and mustache, in a shirt and dark jacket Course lecturer: Dr Gary Kemp
Semester: 1
Lecture hour & venue: see Honours timetable.

Course text: Gary Kemp, What is this thing called Philosophy of Language? 2nd edition (Routledge, 2018)

Teaching resources for this course will be made available on the Philosophy Moodle site.

Intended learning outcomes:

At the end of this course, students should be able to:

  •     understand, state and critically engage with the classical theories of reference and meaning of Frege and Russell;
  •     understand, state and critically engage with the principal issues surrounding the propositional attitudes;
  •     understand, state and critically engage with the theory of direct reference and related issues arising from the writings of Kripke;
  •     understand, state and critically engage with the theory of indexicals;
  •     understand, state and critically engage with pragmatics pioneered by Grice and its interface with theories of reference and the propositional attitudes;
  •     understand, state and critically engage with an alternative outlook on language such as Davidson's, Quine's, or Wittgenstein's.