180015 VO-L VO Lecture with reading on the philosophy of language (VO-L) (2021S)

This lecture course is an introduction to the central questions and topics in the philosophy of language. These include: What is linguistic meaning? How does language allow us to refer to the world – what is reference? What is the relationship between reference, meaning, and truth? How do we manage to say new things again and again with a limited vocabulary of words? How does linguistic communication work? Which actions can we perform by using language? And what are the social and political dimension of how we act with words?

In the first part of the course, we ask what linguistic meaning is. How can signs be meaningful? And how do they get their specific meaning? We will get to know some of the important theories of meaning.

In the second part of the course, we will look at questions in semantics, the study of the meaning of linguistic signs. We will study the classical positions of Bertrand Russell and Gottlob Frege, will analyse the meaning of some basic types of expression (proper names, definite descriptions/determiner phrase) and the dependence of some expressions' meaning on the context of their use.

In the third part of the course, we turn to questions in pragmatics, which is concerned with the use of language by speakers in conversational contexts. We will study speech act theory, models of linguistic communication, and dimensions of non-literal meaning (implicatures & presuppositions).

In the fourth part of the course, we investigate fundamental questions about the relationship of language, politics, and society. In particular, we will study connections between language, discrimination, and social justice.

At the end of the course, students should be able to
+ understand the questions, methods and theories of the philosophy of language of the 20th century,
+ navigate topics in philosophy of language on the basis of the knowledge acquired in the course,
+ critically reflect selected positions in the philosophy of language,
+ analyse and understand literature in the philosophy of language on their own, and
+ apply their knowledge of philosophy of language productively in other areas of their studies.

METHOD: (1) I will upload weekly video & audio files with slides on the weekly lecture topic, which you should watch / listen to within that week. (2) Biweekly, we will have a live online question-and-answer session on BigBlueButton (Moodle) during the regular course slot: Tuesdays at 4:45pm. The session will be on the course topics of the previous two weeks.