The paper aims at providing an argument for a deflationary treatment of the notion of public language meaning. The argument is based on the notion of standards of correctness; I will try to show that as correctness assessments are context-involving, the notion of public language meaning cannot be treated as an explanatory one. An elaboration of the argument, using the notion of ground is provided. Finally, I will consider some limitations of the reasoning presented.

....a notion of 'common, public language' that remains mysterious...useless for any form of theoretical explanation....There is simply no way of making sense of this prong of the externalist theory of meaning and language, as far as I can see, or of any of the work in theory of meaning and philosophy of language that relies on such notions, a statement that is intended to cut rather a large swath. (Chomsky 1995, pp. 48-9) It is a striking (...) fact that despite the constant reliance on some notion of 'community language' or 'abstract language,' there is virtually no attempt to explain what it might be. (Chomsky 1993, p. 39) ....either we must deprive the notion communication of all significance, or else we must reject the view that the purpose of language is communication. ...It is difficult to say what 'the purpose' of language is, except, perhaps, the expression of thought, a rather empty formulation. The functions of language are various. (Chomsky 1980, p. 230) I have yet to see a formulation that makes any sense of the position that "the essence of language is communication." (Chomsky 1980, p. 80; see also 1992b, p 215). (shrink)

Language has long been a problem‐case for subsymbolic theories of mind. The reason for this is obvious: Language seems essentially symbolic. However, recent work has developed a potential solution to this problem, arguing that linguistic symbols are public objects which augment a fundamentally subsymbolic mind, rather than components of cognitive symbol‐processing. I shall argue that this strategy cannot work, on the grounds that human language acquisition consists in projecting linguistic structure onto environmental entities, rather than extracting (...) this structure from them. (shrink)

Arguments directed against conceptions of communication which 'privatise' content are familiar. But such arguments tend not to explore the more general idea that communication involves the attempt by one subject to transmit a sense to another subject. In this paper I argue that there is a distinctive misinterpretation of this more general idea which, in a certain way, belongs to philosophy, and concerning which the 'privacy' interpretation is only an inflection. The paper develops an argument against that interpretation and the (...) attempt is made to draw the full implications of the 'publicness' of the structure of language. (shrink)

Are there really such things as public languages? Are things like English and Urdu mere myths? I urge that, despite an intriguing line of thought which may be extracted from Davidson’s ‘A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs’, philosophers are right to countenance such things in their final ontology. The argument rebutted, which I concede may not have been one which Davidson himself ultimately embraced, is that knowledge of a public language is neither necessary nor sufficient for successful conversational (...) interaction, so that such shared languages are explanatorily otiose. In particular, the ability of interlocutors to communicate in the face of linguistic novelty and error seems to support this conclusion. I respond with two main points. First, initial impressions aside, knowledge of things like English and Urdu is explanatorily necessary. Second, even if successful conversation could be explained without positing such knowledge, we have other reasons to take public languages ontologically seriously. Th.. (shrink)

In this paper, we would like to discuss Wittgenstein’s critique of the idea that a person’s experiences are necessarily private, and these experiences can only be expressible in a private language. Taking a clue from Wittgenstein, we intend to say that the person’s experiences though private, can also be known by others. In the following sections 243 of his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein argues against the possibility of a private language about the subject’s inner experiences. He contends that by (...) coining names/words to name sensations and our inner experiences, we cannot create a private language. If we have a list of names, that cannot function as a language. We need predicate terms; we need the syntax to link the words in the form of a sentence. If we use private names and use the predicates from the language that everyone knows, then the private words will acquire public status like the terms ‘pain’ and ‘sensation.’ These terms are already part of the public language, and if private experiences like pain and sensation cannot be made public, we would not have these terms in our language at all. This is the reason why any application of words is public, and therefore, there is no possibility of a private language. Wittgenstein concentrates on the public rules that govern the correct application for the use of words. And the expressions are meaningful only when these are used according to rules of grammar; if these expressions do not follow any rules of grammar, these are simply meaningless. (shrink)

My modest aim in this note is to sketch three interrelated critiques of public languages, and to respond to them. All are broadly Chomskyan, and all support the same conclusion: that, insofar as they even exist, the study of public languages is not a viable scientific project. (Related critiques of semantics, understood as involving word–world relations, will be touched on as well).

The aim of this paper is to highlight an individualist streak in both Davidson’s conception of language and Chomsky’s. In the first part of the paper, I argue that in Davidson’s case this individualist streak is a consequence of an excessively strong conception of what the compositional nature of linguistic meaning requires, and I offer a weaker conception of that requirement that can do justice to both the publicity and the compositionality of language. In the second part of (...) the paper, I offer a comparison between Davidson’s position on the unreality of public languages, and Chomsky’s position regarding the epiphenomenal status of “externalized” languages. In Chomsky’s case, as in Davidson’s, languages are individuated in terms of the formal theories that serve to account for their systematic structure, and this assumption rests upon a similarly strong and similarly questionable understanding of what it is to employ finite means in pursuit of an infinite task. The alternative, at which I can only hint, is a view of language as a social and historical reality, i.e., a realm of social fact that cannot be exhausted by any formal theory and cannot be reduced to properties of individual speakers. (shrink)

After discussing the manifest inconveniences of Galilean physicalism for both science and common sense, I propose an alternate, Aristotelian ontology of material things and show how it solves the epistemological problems engendered by the New Science. Read at the annual POH Symposium in Lake Wenatchee, WA, May 2011.

Embedding theories of language production and comprehension in theories of action-perception is realistic and highlights that production and comprehension processes are interleaved. However, layers of internal models that repeatedly predict future linguistic actions and perceptions are implausible. I sketch an ecological alternative whereby perceiver/actors are modeled as dynamical systems coupled to one another and to the environment.

Arguments directed against conceptions of communication which 'privatise' content are familiar. But such arguments tend not to explore the more general idea that communication involves the attempt by one subject to transmit a sense to another subject. In this paper I argue that there is a distinctive misinterpretation of this more general idea which, in a certain way, belongs to philosophy, and concerning which the 'privacy' interpretation is only an inflection. The paper develops an argument against that interpretation and the (...) attempt is made to draw the full implications of the 'publicness' of the structure of language. (shrink)

We are the funny organisms that make and follow rules. To understand us, one must understand what is it to institute and follow a rule, to perform correctly or in error. This question is more important than it might at first seem for linguistic meaning is constituted by rules that govern uses of expressions. For example, the fact that 'squid' is correctly applied to squid and incorrectly applied to cuttlefish is part of what makes 'squid' mean what it does. Philosophers (...) sometimes argue further that all representations are rule-governed so that a theory of representation must explain the possibility of misrepresentation. ;The rule-following problem makes an explanation of correctness surprisingly difficult. Philosophers have also not been clear on just what is the problem with rules. I provide a statement of the features of rules and the problems they drive. I then show that some well-known accounts of rule following---Kripke's, Wright's, Blackburn's---are inadequate. My formulation also shows that some favored theories of content---causal, evolutionary, interpretivist---are inadequate. ;Positively, I argue that an essentially social and irreducibly normative organization---a practice---solves the rule-following problem. Therefore, only participants in social practices can follow rules and thence traffic in linguistic meaning. Still, an account of the correctness of a linguistic performance is not yet an explanation of its representational content. I argue that linguistic content is constituted by correctness facts but also by the representational purport of expressions. I explain an expression's purport to represent naturalistically in terms of syndromes of psychological and behavioral symptoms. A theory of linguistic representation, then, must join the non-natural social facts that constitute correctness with the natural individualistic facts that constitute representational purport. ;Such a hybrid theory reveals that thought and language are not as intimately connected as philosophers assume. Whereas linguistic content constitutively partakes of the social organization that sets humans apart from other creatures, thought content involves only refinements of the psycho-behavioral syndromes that we share with most vertebrates. It follows that linguistic content and thought content cannot be explained one in terms of the other. (shrink)

Language use is a public good. Those using a common language receive benefits that are non-excludable and non-rival. And as more people speak the same language, the greater these benefits are. Sometimes individuals make a conscious decision to learn a language other than their native language in order to receive these benefits, and thereby incur costs. This paper is an attempt to determine how we should share the costs among all beneficiaries. I argue against (...) Van Parijs’s proposal for this, and instead argue that an approach found in the work of Gauthier is preferable. A general lesson to be drawn from this paper is that the correct principle for distributing the costs of public goods will depend on whether we think the good in question is required by justice or not. Where Van Parijs went wrong, I claim, was in thinking that a cross-border common language is required by justice. (shrink)

I try to clarify the ways in which one would seek to hold that language and/or thought are public. For each of these theses, I distinguish four forms in which they can be framed, and two ways of establishing them. The first will try to make the publicity of thought follow from that of language; the second will try to make the publicity of language follow from that of thought. I show that none of these strategies (...) can do without the thesis that language and thought are interdependent, and that even while admitting this thesis, the second strategy presents more difficulties than the first. (shrink)

In this article, I examine the relation of religious language and public debate within the context of postsecularism and defend a falsificationist model. I argue that the postsecular public sphere ought to problematize four characteristics of modern thinking; the exclusion of truth and religious language, the asymmetry between religious and secular language, the essentialization of the secular and the religious and, lastly, the exclusivity and exhaustiveness of the secular and religious as categories. Based on these (...) four problematizations, I defend a falsificationist model for the admission of religious language in the public sphere and argue that we ought to allow citizens the right to use the language of their choice in the public sphere, provided that they also provide in their preferred language ‘conditions of falsifiability’, that is, those circumstances upon which the speaking party would accept their argumentation as void. (shrink)

This article discusses the work of George Seddon as a significant Australian intellectual whose writing on postcolonial settler-descendant relations with land and nature is a major contribution to academic and public life. Seddon’s originality lies partly in his bridging knowledge and expertise in both the humanities and sciences. However, while there is a reliance upon factual data drawn from geology, botany and zoology, Seddon’s analyses of language and culture can appear idiosyncratic and unsystematic in terms of social science (...) methods. Based on introspection, the work might be considered ‘autoethnography’, though Seddon seeks to do more than tell stories about himself. In acknowledging both the brilliance and shortcomings of Seddon’s work, I present some examples of how it has stimulated my own research on the cultural implications of naming species and places in Australia. (shrink)

Language in Action demonstrates the viability of mathematical research into the foundations of categorial grammar, a topic at the border between logic and linguistics. Since its initial publication it has become the classic work in the foundations of categorial grammar. A new introduction to this paperback edition updates the open research problems and records relevant results through pointers to the literature. Van Benthem presents the categorial processing of syntax and semantics as a central component in a more general dynamic (...) logic of information flow, in tune with computational developments in artificial intelligence and cognitive science. Using the paradigm of categorial grammar, he describes the substructural logics driving the dynamics of natural language syntax and semantics. This is a general type-theoretic approach that lends itself easily to proof-theoretic and semantic studies in tandem with standard logic. The emphasis is on a broad landscape of substructural categorial logics and their proof-theoretical and semantic peculiarities. This provides a systematic theory for natural language understanding, admitting of significant mathematical results. Moreover, the theory makes possible dynamic interpretations that view natural languages as programming formalisms for various cognitive activities. (shrink)

Large Language Models (LLMs) are generative AI systems capable of producing original texts based on inputs about topic and style provided in the form of prompts or questions. The introduction of the outputs of these systems into human discursive practices poses unprecedented moral and political questions. The article articulates an analysis of the moral status of these systems and their interactions with human interlocutors based on the Habermasian theory of communicative action. The analysis explores, among other things, Habermas's inquiries (...) into the analogy between human minds and computers, and into the status of atypical participants in the linguistic community such as genetically modified subjects and animals. Major conclusions are the LLMs seem to qualify as authors that originally participate in discursive practices but do display only a structurally derivative form of communicative competence and fail to meet the status of communicative agents. In this sense, while the contribution of AI writing systems in public discourse and deliberation can support the process of mutual understanding within the community of speakers, the human actors involved in the development, use, and diffusion of these systems share a collective responsibility for the disclosure of AI authorship and verification and adjudication of validity claims. (shrink)

‘If it bleeds, it leads’, events characterised by fatalities, are likely to attract high levels of media coverage. This study adopts a multidisciplinary approach to investigate public discourses on the MH17 tragedy in Malaysia and the United Kingdom. First, corpus-based discourse analysis was employed to explore the construction of the Malaysian Airlines tragedy MH17 in four selected Malaysian and British newspapers. In addition, an attitudinal study examining 50 Malaysian and 50 UK nationals’ perceptions of the tragedy was conducted. Keywords (...) analysis revealed an overall tendency for the news media to construct the air tragedy through classifications between ‘us’ and ‘others’. Specifically, important ‘Us’ and non-important ‘Other’ in the Malaysian newspapers, versus good ‘Us’ and evil ‘Others’ in the British newspapers. The attitudinal analysis shows, for both the Malaysian and the UK respondents, the most salient associations with the MH17 tragedy related to ‘conflicts’. (shrink)

This paper presents two projects concerned with the application of natural language processing technology for improving communication between Public Administration and citizens. The first project, GIST,is concerned with automatic multilingual generation of instructional texts for form-filling. The second project, TAMIC, aims at providing an interface for interactive access to information, centered on natural language processing and supposed to be used by the clerk but with the active participation of the citizen.

Language, one of humanity’s major transformative innovations, is foundational for many cultural, artistic, scientific, and economic advancements, including the creation of artificial intelligence (AI). However, in the fight against climate change, the power of such innovation is constrained due to the boring language of climate science and science communication. In this essay, we encapsulated the situation and risks of boring language in communicating climate information to the public and countering climate denialism and disinformation. Based on the (...) Serendipity-Mindsponge-3D knowledge management framework, we recommend several strategies for climate scientists and science communicators to be more creative and make their communication more interesting, including collaboration with other cultural sectors (e.g., stand-up comedians, climate fiction, etc.) and AI. (shrink)

The author defends his version of the parallel which can be drawn between Wittgenstein's 'private language' argument and the argument that practical reasons must necessarily be public reasons. This position is compared and contrasted with recent attempts by Christine Korsgaard and Ken O'Day to formulate a 'public reasons' argument. The position is defended against the criticism that it cannt account for the practical force of reasons. Finally it is argued that, although the claim that the reasons must (...) be 'public' is not to be confused with the claim that reasons must be 'other-regarding', the former claim does help to remove certain obstacles to the idea of other-regarding reasons. (shrink)

The issue of hate speech is widely present in the Balkan Peninsula and although it has a serious impact in inter-ethnic and inter-religious relations, it has never been addressed properly by the academia or the judicial systems. This paper aims to outline the main principles that define hate speech from the linguistic and legal perspective. Throughout the paper several international cases of hate speech are cited along with the measures that western European countries take in order to minimize the level (...) of stereotypes and public discrimination. In the second part, the paper brings examples from degrading hate speech cases coming from public figures in Macedonia. In addition, a few comparative cases from the international practice have been cited in order to perceive if an egalitarian society is possible in Macedonia from the aspect of language usage without the hatred constituents by aiming to develop an acceptable public discourse for all. (shrink)

1. There is a tendency nowadays for linguists, philosophers and other theorists of language, to dismiss the notion of an object like the English language or the Polish language as simply mythological or mythopoeic—as of no interest to any serious science of language. Some theorists even appear to deny that there are such things as languages . ‘This notion [of a public language] is unknown to empirical inquiry and raises what seem to be irresolvable (...) problems’, Chomsky said in a lecture he gave recently in London. (shrink)

In this classic, the world's expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution. The Language Instinct received the (...) William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistics Society of America. This edition includes an update on advances in the science of language since The Language Instinct was first published. (shrink)

The idea of ‘public reason’ has recently been associated with Rousseau’s views on the formation of a general will. Advocates of this idea in the Kantian tradition tend to emphasize reflective acts of rational deliberation which, I suggest, are more suited to written than to spoken language. Rousseau’s accounts of the role of spoken language as a means of expressing human needs and the role of pity in the development of a moral form of reasoning, which allows (...) one properly to take into account the interests of others, show that he cannot be so easily interpreted as an advocate of the idea of public reason. This is because his views on the importance of spoken language in democratic politics and the essential part played by the sentiment of pity in the development of moral reasoning imply the legitimacy of modes of expression in the formation of a general will that are not, in any obvious sense, compatible with the demands of public reason. (shrink)

The author defends his version of the parallel which can be drawn between Wittgenstein’s ‘private language’ argument and the argument that practical reasons must necessarily be public reasons. This position is compared and contrasted with recent attempts by Christine Korsgaard and Ken O’Day to formulate a ‘public reasons’ argument. The position is defended against the criticism that it cannt account for the practical force of reasons. Finally it is argued that, although the claim that the reasons must (...) be ‘public’ is not to be confused with the claim that reasons must be ‘other‐regarding’, the former claim does help to remove certain obstacles to the idea of other‐regarding reasons. (shrink)

Hauser defends the proposition that our languages of thought are public languages. One group of arguments points to the coincidence of clearly productive (novel, unbounded) cognitive competence with overt possession of recursive symbol systems. Another group relies on phenomenological experience. A third group cites practical and methodological considerations: Occam's razor and the "streetlight principle" (other things being equal, look under the lamp) that motivate looking for instantiations of outer languages in thought first.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Towards Language Justice:A Call to Identify and Overcome Structural BarriersFelicity RatwayThe patient I am interpreting for praises my interpretation. I've done nothing particularly noteworthy to merit her praise; I followed basic ethical tenets, nothing more. Hearing everything the provider says rather than a brief synopsis exceeds her expectations after many experiences working with untrained interpreters, or being refused interpreting services altogether. The bar shouldn't be this low.I am (...) exhausted. Like most interpreters, I am an independent contractor. I must work 5 am–9 pm to get paid for 8 hours of work. With some language companies, I earn less than minimum wage. To many new interpreters, $35 per hour sounds great—then they realize that driving to and from a one-hour appointment involves two hours of unpaid drive time. In rural areas, this really takes a toll. I spend hours checking pay stubs; I find errors nearly every pay period, but I wouldn't have a court case for the repeated underpayments because when I reach out to ask for the errors to be fixed, they are eventually corrected. Despite my state and national certifications and Master's degree in Interpreting and Translation Studies, medical interpreting doesn't pay the bills. I supplement my income through multiple other jobs.Laws intended to protect the patients we work with as interpreters are seldom enforced. Title VI Guidance defines a competent interpreter as one who has been trained, demonstrated proficiency, demonstrated interpreting skills, and agrees to abide by ethical standards. Patients fare better when competent interpreters are available, but when most patient and provider experiences are with interpreters who haven't met competency standards, patients and providers (understandably) lose trust in the profession. The profession has few opportunities for advancement and struggles to attract interpreters to go through rigorous training or build a long-term career. Skilled interpreters soon leave for greener pastures: the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) houses a registry of interpreters who meet minimum state training and proficiency requirements, and a 2019–2021 study found that roughly 92% of interpreters due to renew dropped off of the registry instead.When I began interpreting, I was shocked by how infrequently laws protecting patients' rights to interpreting services were followed in practice. At primary care appointments, patients often cannot answer questions about specialist visits because interpretation was not provided at the specialist's office. I knew recipients of federal funds couldn't [End Page 164] legally bill patients for interpreting services, yet I was asked to sight-translate paperwork that stated patients would be billed for interpreting services if they were late to an appointment. I reported the issue; years later, the same paperwork would still appear on their public-facing website. I discovered that though state law required credentialed interpreters to be made available, no agency had been tasked with enforcing that law; all that could be done with my complaint was to refer it to the patient's insurance company.In Oregon, Coordinated Care Organizations (CCOs) manage Medicaid plans, and are required to pay for interpreting services for their members. Instead of hiring interpreters directly, many contract with language companies that, in turn, hire us. Providers must book interpreters through the specific language companies contracted with the patient's CCO to avoid paying for the interpreter themselves. I am often called to interpret for speakers of indigenous languages even though I am not able to meet their needs as a Spanish interpreter. I offer contact information for organizations that could provide interpretation in the appropriate language, but the receptionist tells me that she can only go through specific vendors because the clinic doesn't want to have to pay out-of-pocket. Indigenous-led organizations that pay indigenous interpreters a living wage are not contracted with the CCOs in my region. In some cases, when interpreters are not available for a particular language through the CCO's preferred vendor, providers instead ask that an appointment be rescheduled, hoping that an interpreter will be available later. I have seen speakers of rare languages seeking primary care end up in the hospital after being rescheduled several times.Providers I work with often don't know... (shrink)

Self, Language, and World: Problems from Kant, Sellars, and Rosenberg Edited by James R. O'Shea and Eric M. Rubenstein Introduction KANT Willem deVries, Kant, Rosenberg, and the Mirror of Philosophy David Landy, The Premise That Even Hume Must Accept LANGUAGE AND MIND William G. Lycan, Rosenberg On Proper Names Douglas Long, Why Life is Necessary for Mind: The Significance of Animate Behavior Dorit Bar-On and Mitchell Green, Lionspeak: Communication, Expression, and Meaning David Rosenthal, The Mind and Its Expression (...) MIND AND KNOWLEDGE Jeffrey Sicha, The Manifest Image: the Sensory and the Mental Bruce Aune, Rosenberg on Knowing Joseph C. Pitt, Sellarsian Antifoundationalism and Scientific Realism Matthew Chrisman, The Aim of Belief and the Goal of Truth: Reflections on Rosenberg James O’Shea, Conceptual Thinking and Nonconceptual Content: A Sellarsian Divide ONTOLOGY Anton Koch, Persons as Mirroring the World Eric M. Rubenstein, Form and Content, Substance and Stuff Ralf Stoecker, On Being a Realist About Death William G. Lycan, Biographical Remarks on Jay F. Rosenberg Scholarly Publications of Jay F. Rosenberg. (shrink)

Owing to the growing internationalisation of research, educational researchers in the Netherlands are increasingly expected to publish through the medium of the English language. Though this undoubtedly benefits the communication between scholars, there are also side-effects. This paper discusses problematic issues from three perspectives: (i) the use of a non-native language for communication between scholars in the area of education; (ii) the use either exclusively, or not, of a publication record of such publications for purposes of recruitment and (...) promotion of staff; (iii) the relationships between research groups of different disciplines and/or universities. It will be argued that the demand to publish exclusively in a non-native language has damaging effects as far as the context of education is concerned. Not only will it lead to a denial of one's own background and culture, but the uniformisation, (which is the result of it), will also stifle the rich educational landscape by allowing the publication only of items of international interest. The model of the natural sciences is not adequate for the context of education because of the necessarily more local character of the content of educational problems and production of strategies to deal with these. Thus it will become clear that the integrity of the educational researcher is at stake as the research area is selected. (shrink)

Some books are like parents, grandparents or old friends. They have been with us from our earliest days and one treats them almost with familiarity. They belong to one's youth and the recognition that they have been around for months and years keeps company with surprise. For philosophers such a book is A. J. Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic, first published over fifty years ago in 1936. There is a sense in which a similar point may be made about (...) some individuals, but discretion and good manners should deter us from succumbing to the philosophical disease of pressing an analogy too far. Suffice it to say that over a period during which most English speaking philosophers were content to work within a context which was significantly influenced by Ayer's clear and cajoling formulation of a twentieth century of empiricism, F. C. Copleston provided one of the few distinctive alternative philosophical perspectives on major metaphysical questions. This essay will reflect upon the influence of Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic some fifty years after its publication, upon the philosophical discussion of religion and theological questions. (shrink)

This paper distinguishes various ways in which language can act on our affect or emotion experience. From the commonsensical consideration that sometimes we use language merely to report or describe our feelings, I move on to discuss how language can constitute, clarify, and enhance them, as well as induce novel and oft surprising experiences. I also consider the social impact of putting feelings into words, including the reciprocal influences between emotion experience and the public dissemination of (...) emotion labels and descriptions, and how these influences depend on the power of labelling to make complex feelings visible and thus easily accessible. Finally, I address and reinterpret some psychological findings on the so-called “verbal overshadowing” effect. (shrink)

This note argues that research in analytical philosophy broadly conceived should be published exclusively in English. Reasons are given for this and the thesis is defended against thirteen objections.

This book analyzes the uses of emotive language and redefinitions from pragmatic, dialectical, epistemic and rhetorical perspectives, investigating the relationship between emotions, persuasion and meaning, and focusing on the implicit dimension of the use of a word and its dialectical effects. It offers a method for evaluating the persuasive and manipulative uses of emotive language in ordinary and political discourse. Through the analysis of political speeches and legal arguments, the book offers a systematic study of emotive language (...) in argumentation, rhetoric, communication, political science and public speaking. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore two contrasting conceptions of the social character of language. The first takes language to be grounded in social convention. The second, famously developed by Donald Davidson, takes language to be grounded in a social relation called triangulation. I aim both to clarify and to evaluate these two conceptions of language. First, I propose that Davidson’s triangulation-based story can be understood as the result of relaxing core features of conventionalism pertaining to both (...) common-interest and diachronic stability—specifically, Davidson does not require uses of language to be self-perpetuating, in the way required by conventionalism, in order to be bona fide components of linguistic systems. Second, I argue that Davidson’s objections to conventionalism from language innovation and language variation fail, and that certain kinds of negative data in language use require an appeal to diachronic social relations. However, I also argue that recent work on communication in the a.. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, Volume 53, Issue 1, Page 93-112, Spring 2022.

When I studied the Scriptures then I did not feel as I am writing about them now. They seemed to me unworthy of comparison with the grand style of Cicero (Augustine, III, 5).As for the absurdities which used to offend me in Scripture, … I now looked for their meanings in the depth of mystery (sacramentorum) (Augustine, VI, 5).

The beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic offers a unique case study for understanding conceptual and linguistic propagation. In early 2020, scientists, politicians, journalists, and other public figures had to, with great urgency, propagate several public health-related concepts and terms to every person they could. This paper examines the propagation of coronavirus and social distancing and develops a framework for understanding how the language used to express a notion can help or hinder propagation. I argue that anyone designing (...) a representational device for propagation needs to appreciate the three-way causal relationship between language, people’s mental representations, and the extramental world. Using this framework, I explore what makes “social distancing” a bad name for social distancing and why it is unproblematic that “coronavirus” is a scientifically loose way of speaking about the virus. Through this and further study of the many historical examples of linguistic and conceptual propagation, conceptual engineers can better understand the complex challenges facing people who want to propagate representational devices. (shrink)