Mutual Misunderstanding: Scepticism and the Theorizing of Language and InterpretationDuke University Press, 1992 M07 30 - 279 pages Do others understand what we say or write? Do we understand them? Theorists of language and interpretation claim to be more concerned with questions about "what" we understand and "how" we understand, rather than with the logically prior question "whether" we understand each other. An affirmative answer to the latter question is apparently taken for granted. However, in Mutual Misunderstanding, Talbot J. Taylor shows that the sceptical doubts about communicational understanding do in fact have a profoundly important, if as yet unacknowledged, function in the construction of theories of language and interpretation. Mutual Misundertanding thus presents a strikingly original analysis of the rhetorical patterns underlying Western linguistic thought, as exemplified in the works of John Locke, Jacques Derrida, Gottlob Frege, Jonathan Culler, Noam Chomsky, Ferdinand de Saussure, H. Paul Grice, Michael Dummet, Stanley Fish, Alfred Schutz, Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Harold Garfinkel, and others. This analysis reveals how, by the combined effect of appeals to "commonsense" and anxieties about implications of relativism, scepticism has a determining role in the discursive development of a number of the intellectual disciplines making up the "human sciences" today, including critical theory, literary hermeneutics, philosophy of language and logic, communication theory, discourse and conversation analysis, pragmatics, stylistics, and linguistics. Consequently, this provocative study will be of value to readers from a wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds. |
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Page 4
... Moreover , if language theorists ever were to address such questions , they would probably offer the unhesitating response that language theory simply attempts to produce an accurate account of the facts of language , as that task is ...
... Moreover , if language theorists ever were to address such questions , they would probably offer the unhesitating response that language theory simply attempts to produce an accurate account of the facts of language , as that task is ...
Page 5
... Moreover , by means of this investigation , I hope to afford some in- sight into the more general proposition that the discourse of modern humanist thought characteristically takes the form of a dialogue be- tween the sceptic and his ...
... Moreover , by means of this investigation , I hope to afford some in- sight into the more general proposition that the discourse of modern humanist thought characteristically takes the form of a dialogue be- tween the sceptic and his ...
Page 8
... Moreover , as the accepted accounts of what language theories are , they establish the boundaries to and limit the possibilities for what can be acceptable theorizing about language . If we are ever to free our- selves from this ...
... Moreover , as the accepted accounts of what language theories are , they establish the boundaries to and limit the possibilities for what can be acceptable theorizing about language . If we are ever to free our- selves from this ...
Page 12
Scepticism and the Theorizing of Language and Interpretation Talbot J. Taylor. Moreover , it is because we talk about our linguistic activities that those activities acquire for us a recognizable character ; that is , that we can make ...
Scepticism and the Theorizing of Language and Interpretation Talbot J. Taylor. Moreover , it is because we talk about our linguistic activities that those activities acquire for us a recognizable character ; that is , that we can make ...
Page 16
... Moreover , does the sequence of sounds uttered in pronouncing magenta mean only the particular color in the object to which the speaker is point- ing ? Does it not mean similar colors in other objects ? How is this possible ? How ...
... Moreover , does the sequence of sounds uttered in pronouncing magenta mean only the particular color in the object to which the speaker is point- ing ? Does it not mean similar colors in other objects ? How is this possible ? How ...
Contents
Communicational Codes | 47 |
Communicational Reasoning | 115 |
Communicational Practice | 155 |
Denouement | 231 |
References | 259 |
Index | 263 |
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acoustic image actions analogy anti-realism anti-realist arbitrary argues argument artificial language assertion assertion-conditions assumption behavior belief calls characteristics Chomsky code theory commonsense communica communicational acts communicational scepticism communicational understanding occurs communicators ordinarily understand conceived concept Condillac conformity context Derrida determined Dummett empirical justification epistemic ethnomethodology explain expression fact Frege given grasp guage holism I-language individual agents intellectual discourse intellectual metadiscourse interaction interlocutors internalized interpretation interpretive community intersubjectivity justified language code language theory language-game langue linguistic Locke Locke's Lockean logic means mental metacommunicational discourse Moreover municational mutual understanding natural naturalist normative object particular perspective picture possible practical metadiscourse pragmatic rules pragmatic theory premise problem psychological question realist reasoning relativism relativist rhetorical force rhetorical strategies rule rule-following Saussure Saussure's Saussurean semiotic sense sentence shared signifié signify social order speaker and hearer stand structuralist structure theorist thought tion treat utterance vehicle of communicational voluntary words