Philosophy of language

From Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium

Philosophy of language is concerned with general issues surrounding language and meaning. As such, it is connected with questions concerning meaning in the philosophy of mind. It rose to prominence within analytic philosophy in the earlier 20th century - a time at which it was widely felt that a proper understanding of language was central to the traditional problems of philosophy. For instance, the logical positivists advanced the verificationist theory of meaning, on which many of these problems were meaningless, while practitioners of ordinary language philosophy argued for similar conclusions in mid-20th century Oxford.

Topics within contemporary philosophy of language include Wittgenstein's rule-following problem, Quine's thesis of the indeterminacy of translation, and the search for a satisfactory theory of meaning.