Philosophy of language

The philosophy of language is the research field of philosophy, which reveals the fundamental role of language and speech in the knowledge and structures of consciousness and knowledge ^[1] .

The philosophy of language is one of the central areas of research in modern Western philosophy, which focuses on the idea of ​​language as the key to understanding thinking and knowledge. The forerunners of the philosophical-linguistic direction were Aristotle (treatise “Categories”), I. Kant (development of categories of reason), J. J. Rousseau (ideas about the origin of writing), J. Mill (contribution to reference theory), V. Humboldt and others

The transition from philosophical classics to the period of the philosophy of language is associated with a change in the object of research: linguistic entities, sentences and terms, take the place of “ideas”. The cognitive subject often moves to the periphery of the cognitive process or is eliminated altogether, and the discourse begins to be considered as autonomous

At the same time, the so-called “linguistic turn” is characteristic of an extremely wide range of modern lines of development of philosophy, it includes phenomenology and hermeneutics, structuralism and poststructuralism. Modern philosophy considers, in principle, problematic to distract from the linguistic aspect of philosophical problems. Starting from the second half of the 20th century, all the main sections of philosophy experience at least the stylistic influence of philosophical and linguistic thinking

Thus, the philosophy of language is not just a separately taken direction of philosophical research (although narrower definitions are possible, identifying the philosophy of a language only with analytical philosophy), but also a special style of philosophical thinking that is associated with a predominant interest in questions of how to build theories and with the study of the principles of the orderliness of the means of expression of knowledge

Story

The term “philosophy of language” at various times was suggested by: Pavel Ignatievich Zhitetsky (1900), later - Karl Fosler, M. М. Bakhtin, V.N. Voloshinov A. Marti, O. Funke ^[1] .

The philosophy of the language originates in the works of Plato and Aristotle, in the books of medieval authors, logic and mathematical development of J. Boole and J. Mill. The main problems and concepts of modern philosophy of language were formulated in the works of G. Frege, J. Moore and B. Russell, as well as in the Course of General Linguistics by Ferdinand de Saussure.

Stages of the formation of the philosophy of language:

• 80s XIX century - the 30s. XX century. The fight against neo-Hegelianism, the rationale of philosophical-linguistic methods of analysis. The idea of ​​L. Wittgenstein, who developed the theories of B. Russell, J. Moore, G. Frege and other authors, that philosophy is a procedure of “logical clarification of thoughts”, the elimination of pseudo-problem situations from the process of cognition. The origin of the concepts of logical positivism in the Vienna Circle (M. Schlick, O. Neurath, R. Carnap, G. Khan, F. Weismann, K. Godel, G. Feigl, as well as G. Reichenbach who collaborated with them, F. Frank, A Ayer and others), dealing with the problems of the logical analysis of science. Attempts to reduce the theoretical position to some basic sentences, empirical in content.
• Since the late 30s. Twentieth century. by the 60s - turn from logical models of philosophical and linguistic research to the analysis of everyday languages ​​("late" L. Wittgenstein, J. Austin). The emergence of the concept of "language games" as rules emerging in the process of human activity and expressing the principles of human life in general. The development of the theory of speech acts by G. Reil, P. Stroson and others, who believed that the very logic and structure of the language are based on certain cultural background. One of the important places in this period is occupied by the theory of meaning and reference (analysis of ontological, scientific, ethical, religious statements), which was developed by S. Kripke, D. Kaplan, H. Putnam and others, the meaning of which lies in the fact that the language depends on external, social phenomena opposing internal phenomena (such as thinking)
• In the period of the 70s - 90s. Twentieth century. The philosophy of language becomes in many respects psychologically oriented knowledge (the works of J. Hintikki, J. Searle, D. Dunnet, and others). The philosophical problems of consciousness and the philosophy of psychology come out on top.

Central issues

• Founders and developers of individual sections
  • Gottlob Frege, Frank Plampton Ramsay, Bertrand Russell, Saul Kripke, Richard Montague - philosophers of the language of analytical tradition, which lies in the field of logical analysis
  • Ludwig Wittgenstein - the creator of the aphorism "meaning is use"
  • Peter Frederick Strawson is the initiator of the creation of descriptive metaphysics.
  • Ernst Cassirer - Theory of Language as Part of a More General Theory of Symbolic Forms
  • Ferdinand de Saussure - the founder of structural linguistics
  • Noam Chomsky and Jerry Fodor - syntactic, computational, and knowledge-oriented approaches
  • Mikhail Bakhtin, Maurice Blancheau, Paul de Man, George Steiner - theorists, whose works were of a philosophical nature
  • Keith Donnellan, Jürgen Habermas, John Langsho Austin, G.P. Grice, John Searl - Theorists Targeted to the Problems of Using the Language
  • Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida - authors who interpreted the problems of language within the framework of poststructuralism
  • Helen Sixx, Julia Kristeva, Judith Butler - language researchers - feminists
  • Valentin Voloshinov, Rossi-Landi - theorists of the language - Marxists
  • Donald Davidson, Michael Dummitt - developers of value theory

• Main areas of research
  • reference is a representation according to which the value or component of the meaning of a language expression is the subject (or state of affairs) to which this expression indicates
  • Meaning - ideal content, idea, essence, purpose, ultimate goal (value) of linguistic means of expression and language in general
  • understanding - the ability to penetrate the meaning of parts of the language and its holistic organization
  • interpretation (from the Latin interpretatio mediation) - interpretation, explanation of the meaning (the esthetic dimension of the notion “interpretation” as the creative disclosure of a work of art, which is determined by the artist’s ideological and artistic features, differs from this)
  • language functions - disclosure of language dependencies from other phenomena (thinking, culture, etc.) and internal regular characteristics of the connectivity of individual language units: words, sentences, texts (in this case, the concept “function” receives a purely philosophical interpretation, within the framework of which some a phenomenon that depends on another and changes as the phenomenon changes; this differs from the mathematical understanding of a function as a law, according to which each value of a variable (argument) is put in correspondence to some specific value and (or) this value itself, as well as the biological significance of the function as work performed by an organ or organism and the sociological significance that coincides with the role of a phenomenon in public life, or duty, the range of activities of individuals and society generally)
  • communication - (from lat. communicatio) - the act of communication, the connection between two or more individuals, based on mutual understanding; communication of information by one person to another or a number of persons; the geographical understanding of the concept of “communication” as a form of linking remote areas using technical means (mail, telegraph, telephone, etc.) differs from this.
  • translation - the basis, methods and meaning of the interpretation of words, sentences and texts of one language in equivalent units of another language
  • correlation of truth, thought and practice as a complex process, within which an adequate reflection in the mind of the perceiver of everything that exists independently of consciousness (that is, objectively) is compared with elementary acts of thinking and direct activity of people, during which people transform the material world and society
  • semantics
  • value theory

• General issues
  • How do sentences turn out to be a single whole, and what is the meaning of separate parts of sentences?
  • What is the nature of meaning? What is the meaning?
  • What do we do with the language? How do we use it in social life? What is the purpose of the language?
  • How does language relate to consciousness (both speaker and interpreter)?
  • How does language relate to the world?

• The evolution of issues
  • The most important problems of the philosophy of the language of the "early" period
    • the distinction between philosophical and linguistic studies of the structures of thought and the psychological process of thinking;
    • drawing boundaries between the meaning and meaning of linguistic means of expression (the problem of meaning as such);
    • the idea of ​​meaning as a function of a sentence;
    • question about the status of the declarative sentence.
  • Problems of the "late" philosophy of language
    • the genesis of the language from everyday communication;
    • principles and structure of speech acts (socio-cultural background of the language);
    • linguistic nature of consciousness and the possibility of creating artificial intelligence.

• Special sections
  • syntax
  • pragmatics
  • rhetoric
  • symbolic interaction
  • truth conditions

Terms

• Speech components
  • idea
  • sign and phoneme
  • intentionality
  • speech act
  • talking ("encoder") and interpreter ("decoder")
  • tone
  • linguistic context
  • linguistic community

• Essential aspects of meaning
  • concept (including, empty concept (English) Russian.)
  • category
  • lots of
  • the class
  • type and token
  • genus and species
  • connotation and denotation (intention and extension)
  • statement and proposition
  • subject and predicate
  • synonym and antonym

• Reference questions
  • essence
  • property
  • an attitude
  • deixis

• Linguistic phenomena
  • Demonstratives and Indexicals
  • Descriptions, especially Definite descriptions
  • Proper name
  • sentence (commandative, indicative and performative)