CHAPTER THREE
LOGIC AND LANGUAGE
Philosophy of Language
1.1 What is Philosophy of Language?
Philosophy of Language is the reasoned inquiry into the origins of language, nature of
meaning, the usage and cognition of language, and the relationship between language, logic and
reality.
According to semiotics, language is the mere manipulation and use of symbols in order to draw
attention to signified content. Semiotics is the study of sign processes in communication and of how
meaning is constructed and understood.
Thus, language is a body of standard meanings of words and the form of speech used as a means of
expressing the feeling, emotion, desire, thought etc. in a consistent pattern of communication. It is
an important discipline in its own right, and hence, it poses questions like:
What is meaning?
How does language refer to the real world?
Is language learned or is it innate?
How does the meaning of a sentence emerge out of its parts? And other related issues.
Translation and interpretation present other problems to philosophers of language. The resulting
view is called Semantic Holism, a type of Holism which holds that meaning is not something that is
associated with a single word or sentence, but can only be attributed to a whole language.
Language is the most important thing in the study of logic. Giving that logic is the study of
arguments, and language is the fundamental tool of communication. In order to interpret, analyze,
and evaluate arguments well, one must pay close attention to language.
Hence, if we are to successfully evaluate the logical correctness of arguments, it is important to pay
a special attention to the language in which the arguments are cast. More specially, meanings and
definitions are very important both, for clear, effective, and comprehensive communications, and
for logical, scientific, and critical evaluations of arguments.
A Brief Note on the Debates and History of Philosophy of Language???????????
1.3 Some Philosophical Approaches to the Nature of Meaning
The question, "what is meaning?” is not immediately obvious. Most frequently, “Meaning" can be
described as the content carried by the words or signs exchanged by people when communicating
through language. Arguably, there are two essentially different types of linguistic meaning:
Conceptual meaning (which refers to the definitions of words themselves and the features of those
definitions, which can be treated using semantic feature analysis); and
Associative meaning (which refers to the individual mental understandings of the speaker, and
which may be connotative, collocative, social, affective, reflected or thematic)
1|Page
LOGIC AND LANGUAGE
Philosophy of Language
1.1 What is Philosophy of Language?
Philosophy of Language is the reasoned inquiry into the origins of language, nature of
meaning, the usage and cognition of language, and the relationship between language, logic and
reality.
According to semiotics, language is the mere manipulation and use of symbols in order to draw
attention to signified content. Semiotics is the study of sign processes in communication and of how
meaning is constructed and understood.
Thus, language is a body of standard meanings of words and the form of speech used as a means of
expressing the feeling, emotion, desire, thought etc. in a consistent pattern of communication. It is
an important discipline in its own right, and hence, it poses questions like:
What is meaning?
How does language refer to the real world?
Is language learned or is it innate?
How does the meaning of a sentence emerge out of its parts? And other related issues.
Translation and interpretation present other problems to philosophers of language. The resulting
view is called Semantic Holism, a type of Holism which holds that meaning is not something that is
associated with a single word or sentence, but can only be attributed to a whole language.
Language is the most important thing in the study of logic. Giving that logic is the study of
arguments, and language is the fundamental tool of communication. In order to interpret, analyze,
and evaluate arguments well, one must pay close attention to language.
Hence, if we are to successfully evaluate the logical correctness of arguments, it is important to pay
a special attention to the language in which the arguments are cast. More specially, meanings and
definitions are very important both, for clear, effective, and comprehensive communications, and
for logical, scientific, and critical evaluations of arguments.
A Brief Note on the Debates and History of Philosophy of Language???????????
1.3 Some Philosophical Approaches to the Nature of Meaning
The question, "what is meaning?” is not immediately obvious. Most frequently, “Meaning" can be
described as the content carried by the words or signs exchanged by people when communicating
through language. Arguably, there are two essentially different types of linguistic meaning:
Conceptual meaning (which refers to the definitions of words themselves and the features of those
definitions, which can be treated using semantic feature analysis); and
Associative meaning (which refers to the individual mental understandings of the speaker, and
which may be connotative, collocative, social, affective, reflected or thematic)
1|Page
