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. |
From inside the book
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Page vii
... Commonsense 37 Proto - conventionalism ? 40 Communicational Prophylactics 43 Locke's Puzzle 44 Communicational Codes Three On How We Naturally Understand 49 Language and the Genesis of Understanding 51 Linguistic Nature and Artificial ...
... Commonsense 37 Proto - conventionalism ? 40 Communicational Prophylactics 43 Locke's Puzzle 44 Communicational Codes Three On How We Naturally Understand 49 Language and the Genesis of Understanding 51 Linguistic Nature and Artificial ...
Page ix
... Commonsense and Understanding 213 In Understanding We Trust 216 The Moral Imperative to Understand 218 Constructing Intersubjectivity 221 The Practical Solution of Theoretical Puzzles 225 Language Theory for the Practical Minded 228 ...
... Commonsense and Understanding 213 In Understanding We Trust 216 The Moral Imperative to Understand 218 Constructing Intersubjectivity 221 The Practical Solution of Theoretical Puzzles 225 Language Theory for the Practical Minded 228 ...
Page 5
... commonsense " faith of the layman ( who is attacked by the sceptic for believing in propo- sitions of foundationless dogma ) with the intellectual discipline of the theorist ( who responds to the sceptic's attack by attempting to ...
... commonsense " faith of the layman ( who is attacked by the sceptic for believing in propo- sitions of foundationless dogma ) with the intellectual discipline of the theorist ( who responds to the sceptic's attack by attempting to ...
Page 6
... commonsense " opinion of racism , for example , as heinous might appear no more justifiable than the racist's own opinion that racism is a worthy form of self - expression . Within anthropologi- cal theory the cultural relativist claims ...
... commonsense " opinion of racism , for example , as heinous might appear no more justifiable than the racist's own opinion that racism is a worthy form of self - expression . Within anthropologi- cal theory the cultural relativist claims ...
Page 7
... commonsense " picture of the progress of scientific understanding must be replaced by one of random or socially motivated shifts between fundamentally incommensurable theoretical paradigms , advocated by theorists who do not even ...
... commonsense " picture of the progress of scientific understanding must be replaced by one of random or socially motivated shifts between fundamentally incommensurable theoretical paradigms , advocated by theorists who do not even ...
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