Coping with Language

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Inkpin
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Language Games ◽  
Rule Following ◽  
General Picture ◽  
Knowing How ◽  
Linguistic Form ◽  
The World ◽  
Intellectual Activities ◽  
Phenomenological Conception

This chapter has two main tasks. First, it argues that Wittgenstein’s position shows how language is grasped prepredicatively as a linguistic form of knowing-how. Having considered the link between rule-following and customs or institutions – activities lacking the rational transparency of paradigmatically intellectual activities – it takes Wittgenstein’s discussions of the limits of justification, which imply that justification is grounded in a stratum of language-games preceding justification, as a model in to develop an account of prepredicative language use. Second, it shows how Wittgenstein’s views complement Merleau-Ponty’s and Heidegger’s in filling out the Heideggerian framework, before summarizing how the resultant phenomenological conception of language defines language’s role in world disclosure by combining a general picture of language as language-in-the-world with a specific view of linguistic signs’ disclosive function, as instruments characterized by both presentational and pragmatic sense.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1889–1951)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tatum Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Vienna Circle ◽  
Language Games ◽  
Complex Objects ◽  
Philosophical Investigations ◽  
The World ◽  
Complex Words

Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher whose work, largely on the philosophy of language, had far-reaching implications for modernist intellectual history and for enduring scholarly debate. In Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung [Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus] (1921), the only book-length work published in his lifetime, Wittgenstein examined logic and ethics, as well as the nature of language and the boundaries of sense. The work earned him significant recognition, particularly among the group of scientists and logicians of the Vienna Circle. Wittgenstein’s early understanding of language was based on its relationship with—and more specifically, representation of—meaning and reality. According to the Tractatus, every word is the name of an object and that object is the word’s meaning. He held that complex words and meanings could be condensed to absolutely simple elements with definite meanings. These "simple names" represented similarly fixed and permanent "simple objects," and thus there was for Wittgenstein an eternal world of objects, a fixed substance beneath the changing surface appearances of the world. In his posthumously published Philosophische Untersuchungen [Philosophical Investigations] (1953), Wittgenstein appeared to repudiate many of his prior claims. He placed new emphasis on the context in which words are used, referring to different contexts of language-use as "language games" that render his previous notions of simple and complex objects relative.

Frege

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Travis
Keyword(s):  
General View ◽  
General Picture ◽  
The World

This book is about Frege and his contribution to philosophy. It has three parts. Part I presents his general picture of thought, that is, the object of a capacity for thought (what may be thought). The point is to stress the value of separating the business of being true from thinkers’ engagement with such business, thus from issues specifically about language, and this as a model for philosophy in general. It also expands on Frege’s case for the intrinsic publicity (sharability) of thought. Part II concerns some particular developments of the general view made by Frege with a view to serving the needs of his central project (after logic itself): showing arithmetic to be logic. Part III applies the general picture in presenting a view of truth (and its irreducibility), logic of logic’s independence both of thinkers and of the world (its indifference to anything in how things happen to be), and of objectivity.

scholarly journals The Origin and Functioning of Myth: Linguistic Conditions

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 38-47
Author(s):  
Oleksandr Siedin
Keyword(s):  
Political Influence ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
Linguistic Form ◽  
Language Of Science ◽  
Causal Connections ◽  
The World ◽  
Existential Dimension ◽  
Better Than ◽  
Unique Status

The article identifies two approaches to determining the linguistic conditions of the emergence and functioning of the myth. The first approach assumes that the myth is a manifestation of unconscious (M. Müller) or conscious (E. Cassirer, R. Barthes) distortion of language. Within this approach it is impossible to escape from myth because the presentation of the facts of the world in language is inescapable, which is always imperfect. These distortions are meant for political influence, as according to the proponents of the conscious mythologizing of language. Philosophy is tasked with resisting such distortions and, consequently, myth creation in general. This approach seems simplified, because the myth is identified here with the linguistic form of its distribution, reduced to the analysis of distortions of language presentation. At the same time, the psychological and epistemological preconditions of the myth, its unique status in the life of communities are lost. Conditions for the development of the second approach arise through the critique of classical rationality by several influential thinkers who undermined the belief in the exclusive ability of discursive language to present the truth (F. Nietzsche, L. Wittgenstein, M. Heidegger). The second approach assumes that the myth emerges and continues to exist due to the inability of the logos to present some important aspects of reality, especially its existential dimension (P. Tillich, H. Blumenberg, L. Hatab, K. Morgan). In this case, myth and logos become alternative and at the same time closely connected linguistic ways of presenting the truth. Logos (the language of science) presents primarily abstract causal connections of essences. At the same time, mythical narratives are better than science at presenting the mysteries of origin and existence, creating a hierarchy of values for communities.

scholarly journals China's Policy to Close Borders to Prevent the Spread of the Second Wave of Covid-19 Virus

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-178
Author(s):  
Elyta Elyta ◽  
Syarifah Ema Rahmaniah ◽  
Hendra Ramdani
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Cell Phones ◽  
Border Region ◽  
Knowing How ◽  
Data Collection Methods ◽  
The World ◽  
Internet Searches ◽  
Second Wave ◽  
Local Transmission ◽  
Collection Methods

At the beginning of 2020, the world was shocked by the outbreak of Covid-19, which was known to have originated from Wuhan. The increase in cases of local transmission in China's border region with Russia has sparked new concerns. In writing this paper, the author uses data collection methods with literature studies from journals and electronic books, including data from trusted websites through internet searches in the form of soft files that can support the paper's explanation. From the results of this paper, the reader can see that it is divided into several essential points explaining how China's policy to close the border in Russia to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 Virus in their country, first, how the procedures carried out by China in tightening checks on Russian borders. And Second, knowing how China monitors its citizens by using cell phones.

A Dynamical, Self-Organized View of the Context for Linguistic Performance

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-86
Author(s):  
Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr.
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Linguistic Processing ◽  
Linguistic Performance ◽  
Self Organized ◽  
Temporal Process ◽  
The World ◽  
Organizational View

Most everyone agrees that context is critical to the pragmatic interpretation of speakers’ utterances. But the enduring debate within cognitive science concerns when context has its influence in shaping people’s interpretations of what speakers imply by what they say. Some scholars maintain that context is only referred to after some initial linguistic analysis of an utterance has been performed, with other scholars arguing that context is present at all stages of immediate linguistic processing. Empirical research on this debate is, in my view, hopelessly deadlocked. My goal in this article is to advance a framework for thinking about the context for linguistic performance that conceives of human cognition and language use in terms of dynamical, self-organized processes. A self-organizational view of the context for linguistic performance demands that we acknowledge the multiple, interacting constraints which create, or soft-assemble, any specific moment of pragmatic experience. Pragmatic action and understanding is not producing or recovering a “meaning” but a continuously unfolding temporal process of the person adapting and orienting to the world. I discuss the implications of this view for the study of pragmatic meaning in discourse.

On the roles of repetition in language teaching and learning

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane Larsen-Freeman,
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Complexity Theory ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
The World ◽  
Mutable State ◽  
Exact Replication ◽  
Language Teaching And Learning

AbstractRepetition is common in language use. Similarly, having students repeat is a common practice in language teaching. After surveying some of the better known contributions of repetition to language learning, I propose an innovative role for repetition from the perspective of complexity theory. I argue that we should not think of repetition as exact replication, but rather we should think of it as iteration that generates variation. Thus, what results from iteration is a mutable state. Iteration is one way that we create options in how to make meaning, position ourselves in the world as we want, understand the differences which we encounter in others, and adapt to a changing context.

A Pragmatic Act Analysis of English Postproverbials on Twitter

Matatu ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 379-392
Author(s):  
Ronke Eunice Okhuosi
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Standard English ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Contextual Features ◽  
The World ◽  
Radical Revision ◽  
Cultural Indices

Abstract Postproverbiality, the novel perspective to studying proverbs, has focused mainly on the radical revision of African proverbs. However, this phenomenon is not only found in African proverbs, but also in many other languages as already suggested in literature. Therefore, this study investigates postproverbiality in English proverbs as used on social media, particularly Twitter. Twitter is especially known for people’s display of radical ideologies, opinions, and idiosyncrasies; therefore, it serves as a useful source for such radical revision of English proverbs. The analysis was done using Jacob Mey’s (2001) Pragmatic Acts as theoretical framework. The data was purposively gathered using five standard English proverbs to search for postproverbial versions; a total of thirty postproverbials were discovered on Twitter. The analysis revealed ten practs and allopracts which include affirming, insisting, informing, counselling, warning, instructing, and encouraging. These were projected through contextual features of shared situational knowledge, voicing, inference, metaphor, and socio-cultural knowledge. The interaction among the textual and contextual features and the allopracts shows that cultures and occurrences in public affairs affect such cultural indices as proverbs and language use and this interaction increases through the internet and social networks which link the world into a global community.

The World Disclosed

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Inkpin
Keyword(s):  
Being And Time ◽  
The World ◽  
Loss Of Contact ◽  
Phenomenological Conception ◽  
The Way

This chapter clarifies the sense of world disclosure implied by a phenomenological conception of language. It takes the two main lessons of Heidegger’s discussion of realism and idealism in Being and Time to be that traditional debates are based on mistaken ontological presuppositions, and that there is no gap between the way the world appears ‘for us’ and the way it is ‘in itself’. Applying the second lesson to language, it shows how the mediation and constitutive role of language can be understood as genuinely disclosing the world without introducing a potentially refractive or distortive loss of contact with referents. Applying the first lesson, it contrasts the phenomenological conception of language developed here with some familiar forms of realism and nonrealism, arguing that by rejecting an inside-outside opposition it moves beyond such conventional alternatives.

Phenomenological Commitments

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Inkpin
Keyword(s):  
Language Use ◽  
Formal System ◽  
Propositional Content ◽  
Specific Focus ◽  
The World

This chapter identifies some general features that characterize a conception of language as phenomenological. Taking Heidegger’s nondualist view of ‘being-in-the-world’ as a model, it suggests that this involves conceiving language as ‘language-in-the-world’, as characterized by an antireductionist attitude and rejection of the ideas that language is a ‘formal’ system of signs and that it sustains an inside-outside opposition. It is then argued that critically assessing the significance of a phenomenology of language in relation to other philosophical conceptions of language requires a specific focus, and that this is provided by Heidegger’s emphasis (chapter 1) on the derivative nature of predication and the possibility of prepredicative language use. Hence the chapter also examines the idea of prepredicative foundation, arguing that this refers to factors that are functionally and structurally presupposed by propositional content.

The Relevance of Moore and Wittgenstein

2021 ◽  
pp. 205-222
Author(s):  
Ernest Sosa
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Language Games ◽  
On Certainty

Moore lays out his Defence of Common Sense in a paper so titled, and thought by Wittgenstein to be Moore’s best and that stimulated his own On Certainty. Wittgenstein there repudiates Moore’s epistemology and offers a radically different alternative. This chapter presents the gist of that alternative, while inviting the reader to compare that gist with supportive passages gather in the Appendix to the chapter. Wittgenstein is concerned with language games, with pragmatics of language use, with dialectical interplay, with what it is proper to say to someone, and with the effects of context on all of that. Moore in his relevant epistemology is largely unconcerned with such dialectical, linguistic, or contextual issues. This chapter also abstracts almost wholly from them, while remaining neutral on their substance and on their relation to more purely epistemological issues.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document