Course title: Philosophy of Language
Author: Prof. Lolita Bronislavovna Makeeva
Course description: This course is an introduction to the philosophy of language. It is
compulsory and is read to philosophy students in their third year of learning. The course
consists of 10 lectures and 10 seminars. The course mainly concerns the 20th century analytic
philosophy of language. The accent will be made on different aspects of the problem of
meaning.
Course textbook: Lycan W.G. Philosophy of Language: A Contemporary Introduction. L.:
Routledge, 1999. The textbook is available in an electronic form at the NRU HSE library (the
electronic resources).
Other course texts: Miller A. Philosophy of Language. 2nd ed. L.: Routledge, 2007; LePore E.,
Smith B.C. (eds.). A Handbook of Philosophy of Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2006; Tanesini A. Philosophy of Language A-Z. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007;
Martinich A.P. (ed.) The Philosophy of Language. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Syllabus. The course will cover the following topics:
Topic 1. The Subject and Short History of Philosophy of Language (philosophy of language and
linguistics, naturalism and conventionalism concerning names in ancient Greek philosophy,
Aristotle’s semantics, Augustine; philosophy of language, the medieval semantics, Locke’s
theory of language, Leibniz’s artificial language, Peirce’s semiotics, Humboldt’s theoty of
national languages, de Saussure’s general linguistics, the “linguistic turn” in the 20th-century
philosophy).
Topic 2. The Problem of Meaning and Reference (ideational theories of meaning, Frege’s theory
of sense and reference, Russell’s theory of definite descriptions, meaning and verificationism,
Carnap on the extension and intension of linguistic expressions, Searle’s cluster theory, Kripke’s
causal theory of reference).
Topic 3. Meaning and Truth (the notion of truth conditions, Tarski’s semantic conception of
truth, Davidson’s truth-condition semantics, truth and translation, radical interpretation and
semantic holism, Dummett’s systematic theory of meaning, possible worlds and intensional
semantics).
Topic 4. Meaning and Use (Wittgenstein on meaning as use and language games, Austin’s and
Searle’s theory of speech acts, Grice on speaker’s meaning and sentence meaning, the notion of
presupposition and conventional implicature, Searle’s illocutionary and perlocutionary
intentions).
Topic 5. Language and Mind (the mental basis of linguistic understanding and use, the notions
of linguistic meaning and mental content, internalism and externalism of meaning, Putnam’s
Twin-Earth argument, Chomsky on innateness of language).
Topic 6. Skepticism about meaning (Quine on analyticity and the indeterminacy of translation,
Kripke’s skeptical paradox and responses to it).
Topic 7. Language and Ontology (Sapir and Whorf’s hypothesis of linguistic relativity, Quine on
ontological relativity, Dummett on realism and anti-realism)
Course prerequisites: Students are required to have a basic knowledge of elementary logic and
general philosophy (epistemology and ontology).
Methods of Instruction. The following forms of instruction are used in the course:
1. lectures (2 hours a week);
2. classes (2 hours a week);
3. a final paper (essay);
4. presentations in class;
5. self-study;
6. oral examination.
Grading system. Grades will be calculated as follows:
30% - class participation/attendance
30% - final paper (essay)
40% - final oral examination.