Context Dependence Perspective And Relativity

This volume brings together original papers by linguists and philosophers on the role of context and perspective in language and thought. Several contributions are concerned with the contextualism/relativism debate, which has loomed large in recent philosophical discussions. In a substantial introduction, the editors survey the field and map out the relevant issues and positions.

The phenomenon of context dependence is so multifaceted that it is tempting to classify it as hetergenous. It is especially evident in the case of the difference between context dependence as understood in the philosophy of language and context dependence as understood in the philosophy of mind. One of the aims of the present volume is to show that as varied as the phenomenon of context dependence is, the similarities between its different manifestations are profound and undeniable. More importantly, as evidenced in a number of papers presented on the subsequent pages of this volume, a broad perspective on the phenomenon of context dependence helps us to re-apply theories devised for one of the subfields of philosophy to the other subfields. Since the connections and analogies between many uses of contextualism may not be initially obvious, keeping an open perspective and the willingness to learn from the work of others may sometimes be crucial for finding new, satisfactory solutions.

Recanati examines the nature of thought and understanding, and defends the idea that truth is relative to context. The book will be of interest to those working in philosophy of language and linguistics, as well as philosophers of mind epistemologists, and psychologists and cognitive scientists.

This volume addresses foundational issues of context-dependence and indexicality, which are at the center of the current debate within the philosophy of language. Topics include the scope of context-dependency, the nature of content and the character of input data of cognitive processes relevant for the interpretation of utterances. There's also coverage of the role of beliefs and intentions as contextual factors, as well as the validity of arguments in context-sensitive languages. The contributions consider foundational issues regarding context-sensitivity from three different, yet related, perspectives on the phenomenon of context-dependence: representational, structural, and functional. The contributors not only address the representational, structural and/or functional problems separately but also study their mutual connections, thus furthering the debate and bringing competing approaches closer to unification and consensus. This text appeals to students and researchers within the field. This is a very useful collection of essays devoted to the roles of context in the study of language. Its essays provide a useful overview of the current debates on this topic, and they put forth novel contributions that will undoubtedly be of relevance for the development of all areas in philosophy and linguistics interested in the notion of context. Stefano Predelli Department of Philosophy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK

Context is a core notion of linguistic theory. However, while there are numerous attempts at explaining single aspects of the notion of context, these attempts are rather diverse and do not easily converge to a unified theory of context. The present multi-faceted collection of papers reconsiders the notion of context and its challenges for linguistics from different theoretical and empirical angles. Part I offers insights into a wide range of current approaches to context, including theoretical pragmatics, neurolinguistics, clinical pragmatics, interactional linguistics, and psycholinguistics. Part II presents new empirical findings on the role of context from case studies on idioms, unarticulated constituents, argument linking, and numerically-quantified expressions. Bringing together different theoretical frameworks, the volume provides thought-provoking discussions of how the notion of context can be understood, modeled, and implemented in linguistics. It is essential for researchers interested in theoretical and applied linguistics, the semantics/pragmatics interface, and experimental pragmatics.

What methodological impact does Contextualism have on the philosophy of language? This collection sets out to provide some answers. The authors in this volume question three ultimately connected assumptions of the philosophy of language. The first assumption relates to the predominant status of referential semantics and its power to explain truth-conditional meaning. This assumption has come under attack by the context thesis and a number of papers pursue the question of whether this is justified. The second assumption gives priority to assertive sentences when considering language use. The context thesis changes our understanding of language use altogether; possible implications from this methodological shift are addressed in this volume. According to the third assumption, philosophical analysis amounts to nothing more than conceptual analysis. The context thesis risks undermining this project. Whether conceptual analysis can still be defended as a methodological tool is discussed in this volume.

This volume responds to and reassesses the work of Hector-Neri Castañeda (1924-1991). The essays collected here, written by his students, followers, and opponents, examine Castañeda’s seminal views on deontic logic, metaethics, indedicality, praticitions, fictions, and metaphysics, utilizing the critical viewpoint afforded by time, as well as new data, to offer insights on his theories and methodology.

Papers in the collection concentrate on different issues relevant for contemporary research within semantics, such as the linguistic and philosophical status of representations, reference theory and indexicals, situation semantics, formal semantics, normativity of meaning and speech acts, and different approaches to context and contextualism. The authors investigate the links between semantics and syntax, and between semantics, pragmatics, and speech act theory, and demonstrate that it is possible to integrate findings from different disciplines. Recent studies often advocate a ‘pragmatic turn’ in the study of meaning and context; however, the papers in the volume show that semantics and meaning remain in the center of research carried out within contemporary linguistics and philosophy, especially the philosophy of language. The volume includes contributions by: Brian Ball (St Anne’s College, Oxford), John Collins (University of East Anglia), Luis Fernández Moreno (Complutense University of Madrid), Chris Fox (University of Essex), Filip Kawczyński (University of Warsaw), Katarzyna Kijania-Placek (Jagiellonian University), Joanna Klimczyk (Polish Academy of Sciences), Paul Livingston (University of New Mexico), Mark Pinder (University of Bristol), Ernesto Perini-Santos (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais), Tabea Reiner (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich), Stefan Riegelnik (University of Zurich), Arthur Sullivan (Memorial University of Newfoundland), Massimiliano Vignolo (University of Genoa), and Marián Zouhar (Slovak Academy of Sciences). The volume should be of interest to linguists, philosophers of language, and philosophers in general.