Speech-act theory is the interdisciplinary study of the wide range of things we do with words. Originally stemming from the influential work of twentieth-century philosophers, including J. L. Austin and Paul Grice, recent years have seen a resurgence of work on the topic. On one hand, a new generation of linguists, philosophers, and cognitive scientists have made impressive progress toward reverse-engineering the psychological underpinnings that allow us to do so much with language. Meanwhile, speech-act theory has been used to enrich our understanding of pressing social issues that include freedom of speech, racial slurs, and the duplicity of political discourse. This volume presents fourteen new essays by many of the philosophers and linguists who have led this resurgence. The topics span a methodological range that includes formal semantics and pragmatics, foundational issues about the nature of linguistic representation, and work on a variety of forms of indirect and/or uncooperative speech that occupies the intersection of the philosophy of language, ethics, and political philosophy. Several of the contributions demonstrate the benefits of integrating the methodologies and perspectives of these literatures. The essays are framed by a comprehensive introductory survey of the contemporary literature written by the editors.
Reviews
...The volume touches on many issues and it contains many new and challening ideas....It does a good job a[t] presenting some of the most discussed and original ones. Anyone interested in recent debates on semantics, pragmatics and the philosophy of language, and, particularly, in speech act theory widely understood, will find informative and stimulating work in this volume. * Maria de Ponte, University of the Basque Country , Journal of Pragmatics *



Book Information
ISBN 9780198738831
Author Daniel Fogal
Format Hardback
Page Count 448
Imprint Oxford University Press
Publisher Oxford University Press
Weight(grams) 792g
Dimensions(mm) 239mm * 163mm * 31mm