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
... Naturally Understand 49 Language and the Genesis of Understanding 51 Linguistic Nature and Artificial Languages 54 Code Theory 57 Phylogenetic Naturalism 61 Naturalism Modernized 66 Chomsky's Origins 69 Four On What Understanding Must ...
... Naturally Understand 49 Language and the Genesis of Understanding 51 Linguistic Nature and Artificial Languages 54 Code Theory 57 Phylogenetic Naturalism 61 Naturalism Modernized 66 Chomsky's Origins 69 Four On What Understanding Must ...
Page 3
... natural to conclude that each of us is little more than a psychological island : that is , we are isolated solip- sists who hear only the echo of our own voices , all the while believing and acting under the tragicomic illusion that we ...
... natural to conclude that each of us is little more than a psychological island : that is , we are isolated solip- sists who hear only the echo of our own voices , all the while believing and acting under the tragicomic illusion that we ...
Page 6
... naturally leads to further ques- tions about the definition of " our own society . " Are women and men members of the same culture ? Children and adults ? The believer and the atheist ? The poor and the rich ? The governed and the ...
... naturally leads to further ques- tions about the definition of " our own society . " Are women and men members of the same culture ? Children and adults ? The believer and the atheist ? The poor and the rich ? The governed and the ...
Page 8
... natural , and perfectly justifiable , response would be for a reader to object that , in order to gain some rhetorical leverage in my metatheoretical discourse , I am asking leave to beg some of the most fundamental questions it raises ...
... natural , and perfectly justifiable , response would be for a reader to object that , in order to gain some rhetorical leverage in my metatheoretical discourse , I am asking leave to beg some of the most fundamental questions it raises ...
Page 9
... natural objections to all or part of its interpretive framework in order to see if this framework can help to effect a perceptual shift in how they make sense of the discourses that constitute modern language theory . If I am granted ...
... natural objections to all or part of its interpretive framework in order to see if this framework can help to effect a perceptual shift in how they make sense of the discourses that constitute modern language theory . If I am granted ...
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