Abstract
The paper begins with an account of the emergence of analytic philosophy of language in the twentieth century in the context of the development of logic and the linguistic turn. Subsequently, it describes two examples of analytic philosophy of language in its heyday when the discipline was conceived as first philosophy. Finally, it provides, by way of conclusion, a succinct outline of the current state of philosophy of language, marked by modesty and fragmentation. It is claimed that even if one retains optimism about the prospects of philosophy of language in the first century of the new millennium, it would be unreasonable to disagree with the opinion that the present-day philosophy of language is a highly specialized and diversified discipline and no longer so central for philosophical enterprise as it used to be.
Acknowledgements
I appreciate this opportunity for contributing a paper for the special issue of Semiotica devoted to the late Professor Jerzy Pelc who did so much for the advancement of semiotic studies and philosophy of language in Poland and abroad. An earlier version of the paper was presented as a plenary lecture during the Sixth International Conference on Philosophy of Language and Linguistics, PhiLang 2019, at the University of Lodz, 10–12 May 2019. I am very grateful to Professor Piotr Stalmaszczyk for the invitation and stimulating comments from him and the audience.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- An introduction: use and meaning – a special issue of Semiotica devoted to Jerzy Pelc
- Research Articles
- Functional logical semiotics of natural language
- The manner of use, the uses and sub-uses of terms in social sciences: from the functional approach to natural language to applied semiotics and the philosophy of science
- Investigations of an anti-semiote: Stanisław Lem’s semiotic ideas in light of semiotic functionalism of Jerzy Pelc
- Metaphilosophical metamorphoses of analytic philosophy of language
- Four puzzling paragraphs: Frege on ‘≡’ and ‘=’
- On how to legitimately constrain a semantic theory
- Łukasiewicz, determinism, and the four-valued system of logic
- The representation of gappy sentences in four-valued semantics
- Fictional names, their use and pragmatic interpretations
- Names of places
- Groundwork for a pragmatics for formalized languages
- Token reflexivity and logic
- Indexicals and essential demonstrations
- On the logical form and ontology of inferences in conversational implicatures
- Omnipresent meaning-interdependence and ubiquitous analyticity
- Are representations glorified receptors? On use and usage of mental representations
- Sounds and gestures of linguistic reference: the endurance of reality in the poetry of Wallace Stevens
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- An introduction: use and meaning – a special issue of Semiotica devoted to Jerzy Pelc
- Research Articles
- Functional logical semiotics of natural language
- The manner of use, the uses and sub-uses of terms in social sciences: from the functional approach to natural language to applied semiotics and the philosophy of science
- Investigations of an anti-semiote: Stanisław Lem’s semiotic ideas in light of semiotic functionalism of Jerzy Pelc
- Metaphilosophical metamorphoses of analytic philosophy of language
- Four puzzling paragraphs: Frege on ‘≡’ and ‘=’
- On how to legitimately constrain a semantic theory
- Łukasiewicz, determinism, and the four-valued system of logic
- The representation of gappy sentences in four-valued semantics
- Fictional names, their use and pragmatic interpretations
- Names of places
- Groundwork for a pragmatics for formalized languages
- Token reflexivity and logic
- Indexicals and essential demonstrations
- On the logical form and ontology of inferences in conversational implicatures
- Omnipresent meaning-interdependence and ubiquitous analyticity
- Are representations glorified receptors? On use and usage of mental representations
- Sounds and gestures of linguistic reference: the endurance of reality in the poetry of Wallace Stevens