Insensitive Semantics
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Overview
Insensitive Semantics is an overview of and contribution to the debates about how to accommodate context sensitivity within a theory of human communication, investigating the effects of context on communicative interaction and, as a corollary, what a context of utterance is and what it is to be in one.- Provides detailed and wide-ranging overviews of the central positions and arguments surrounding contextualism
- Addresses broad and varied aspects of the distinction between the semantic and non-semantic content of language
- Defends a distinctive and explanatorily powerful combination of semantic minimalism and speech act pluralism
- Confronts core problems which not only run to the heart of philosophy of language and linguistics, but which arise in epistemology, metaphysics, and moral philosophy as well
Synopsis
Cappelen (philosophy, Vassar College and the U. of Oslo) and Lepore (philosophy, Rutgers U.) explore the debate in the philosophy of language concerning the distinction between semantic content and non- semantic (pragmatic) content, and how to accommodate context sensitivity within a theory of human communication. They propose "a simple and naive view" about context sensitivity—that there are just a few easily identifiable context sensitive expressions in natural language—and explain their theory based on a combination of two views, which they call Semantic Minimalism and Speech Act Pluralism. The text raises questions about the validity of the chief theses of a significant number of published articles and books by numerous philosophers and linguists due to what Cappelen and Lepore see as an internally inconsistent view. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Editorials
From the Publisher
“This book is an ingenious defense of two positions not widely thought to be compatible: truth-conditional semantics and semantic minimalism. Cappelen and Lepore’s highly controversial views are already, and will continue to be, at the center of inquiry into the nature of linguistic communication.” Jason Stanley, University of Michigan“Cappelen and Lepore have performed a singular service in bringing together the threads of the contextualist debate, and in formulating a minimalist alternative to some current trends.” James Higginbotham, University of Southern California
“This is a pleasingly spare yet instructively sophisticated account of how Davidsonians can accommodate the massive context sensitivity of language use. Good stuff.” Paul Pietroski, University of Maryland
“This is a book of considerable importance, which deals with a topic currently at the center of research in the philosophy of language. As a result, Insensitive Semantics has been and will continue to be widely discussed …This book pushes the discussion of context-sensitivity forward in new and useful directions. Read it and learn from it.” Journal of Linguistics