Abstract

This dissertation is an attempt to understand the nature of language by analyzing the process by which physical linguistic tokens come to be invested with meaning. In the first four chapters I consider the positions which various philosophers have taken with respect to this question, most notably the evolving philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, but also those of Frege and the logical empiricists of the Vienna Circle. I analyze Wittgenstein's development as a process of coming to see the implications of conceiving of language as a concrete, spatio-temporal phenomenon as opposed to the timeless, speakerless images of his early work. I discuss how this insight led him to reject the Platonism of Frege, his own early doctrines and logical empiricism. I go on to use Wittgensteinian arguments concerning the role of ostention, the following of rules, and the possibility of a private language to show that linguistic meaning is essentially dialogical in character, that is, the possibility of meaning requires interaction between a speaker and a hearer. I contrast this with monological conceptions which hold that linguistic meaning is completely determinate in the mind of the individual speaker. In Chapter V I draw close connections between these Wittgensteinian arguments and Saussure's doctrines that language is the social use of physical signs and that the signs themselves are arbitrary in nature. In Chapter VI, using Michael Dummett's work as an example, I criticize the longstanding assumption that the study of linguistic meaning in itself can supply reasons to demand the revision of linguistic practice. I show that such revisionism relies on a conception of language that is monological and which falsely assumes that linguistic meaning is essentially representational. I argue that the move to a social and dialogical conception of language demands that the crucial functioning of language to represent the world be seen as embedded in a more all-encompassing network of social practices. I conclude by arguing that it is these social practices which are revealed by the philosophical study of linguistic meaning