Preamble: The philosophy of language course aims at a reasoned inquiry into the nature, origins, and usage of language from the perspectives of analytic and continental philosophers.The course highlights how the analytic philosophy of language is concerned with the nature and meaning,language use,language cognition ,and the relationship between language and reality while for continental philosophers philosophy of language is an inextricable part of many other areas of thought, such as phenomenology, semiotics, hermeneutics, Heideggerean ontology, existentialism, structuralism, deconstruction and critical theory.
Course Contents: An introduction to the philosophy of language: basic topics and problems in philosophy of language; language interpretation and Christian philosophy :St. Augustine; philosophers of language: John Locke on words, Frege on sense and reference, Russell on denoting ,J. L. Austin on how to do things with words ; Quine and the analytic-synthetic distinction; Wittgenstein : the picture theory of meaning , the Later Wittgenstein on language, meaning and use ;from continental philosophy to aesthetics and literary tradition :Heidegger,Kafka and Milan Kundera.
Texts:
1. W. G. Lycan, Philosophy of Language: A Contemporary Introduction. New York: Routledge,2000.
2. Austin, J. L., How To Do Things With Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962
References:
1. L.Wittgenstein,Philosophical Investigations: The German Text, With a Revised English Translation. Anscombe, G. and Anscombe, E. (Trans.). Oxford: Basil Blackwell Pub., 2002
2. Hagi Kenaan,The Present Personal: Philosophy and the Hidden Face of Language. Columbia University Press, 2005.
3. Quine, W.V.O. (1960) Word and Object. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
4. L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. C. Ogden. (Trans.) New York: Dover Pub., 1999
