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Is there such a thing as a language?

Is there such a thing as a language?
Is there such a thing as a language?
A paper aimed primarily at a non-academic audience in which I suggest that Lewis Carroll's Alice novels can be viewed, in part, as exploring two competing conceptions of language, conceptions that the philosopher Donald Davidson critically examines. According to the Institutional View, language is a system of rules regulating the use of words and words have the meanings that they do in virtue of those rules. According to the Invention View, what words mean is rather a matter of how the speaker intends those words to be understood by her audience in contexts of communication. Davidson is a well-known advocate of the Invention View. I argue that the Alice novels, perhaps surprisingly, suggest reasons to favour instead the Institutional View
davidson, language, rules, carroll, alice, wonderland
9780470558362
107-121
Wiley
Whiting, Daniel
c0847bb4-963e-470d-92a2-5c8aae5d5aef
Irwin, William
Davis, Richard Brian
Whiting, Daniel
c0847bb4-963e-470d-92a2-5c8aae5d5aef
Irwin, William
Davis, Richard Brian

Whiting, Daniel (2010) Is there such a thing as a language? In, Irwin, William and Davis, Richard Brian (eds.) Alice in Wonderland and Philosophy: Curiouser and Curiouser. (Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series) Hoboken, USA. Wiley, pp. 107-121.

Record type: Book Section

Abstract

A paper aimed primarily at a non-academic audience in which I suggest that Lewis Carroll's Alice novels can be viewed, in part, as exploring two competing conceptions of language, conceptions that the philosopher Donald Davidson critically examines. According to the Institutional View, language is a system of rules regulating the use of words and words have the meanings that they do in virtue of those rules. According to the Invention View, what words mean is rather a matter of how the speaker intends those words to be understood by her audience in contexts of communication. Davidson is a well-known advocate of the Invention View. I argue that the Alice novels, perhaps surprisingly, suggest reasons to favour instead the Institutional View

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More information

Published date: January 2010
Keywords: davidson, language, rules, carroll, alice, wonderland

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 79723
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/79723
ISBN: 9780470558362
PURE UUID: 6b93a78b-36c3-4038-85d4-765ac6569f38

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Date deposited: 19 Mar 2010
Last modified: 10 Dec 2021 17:35

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Contributors

Author: Daniel Whiting
Editor: William Irwin
Editor: Richard Brian Davis

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