Xinhe Wu

This course is available on the BSc in Philosophy and Economics, BSc in Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, BSc in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, BSc in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (with a Year Abroad) and BSc in Politics and Philosophy. This course is available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit and to General Course students.

Students taking this course should have taken a course in introductory logic such as PH111 (or PH101/PH104)

We use language all the time to express our thoughts and understand others. But how does language work? What is it that makes squiggles on a page, or strings of noises meaningful? What are these meanings, and where do they come from? This is the starting point for an investigation into the Philosophy of Language.

Philosophers have been interested in language for centuries, and in the 20th and 21st century with the development of modern logic and the dawn of analytic philosophy, philosophy of language has taken a central role. Key questions covered in this course include: how do names refer to an object? Do words mean whatever we intend or use them to mean? What role does convention play in fixing meanings? Are our terms vague, or precise? Can a person have a private language? How do we communicate beyond the literal? What are speech acts and are they available to everyone in our society? All of these questions are of interest in their own right, and also have applications to further issues in philosophy and beyond.

10 hours of lectures, 10 hours of classes and 3 hours of workshops in the WT.

No meetings take place in reading week (week 6). 

Students will be expected to produce 1 essay in the WT.

• Lycan, William G. (1999). Philosophy of Language: A Contemporary Introduction. Routledge.
• Kripke, Saul A. (1980). Naming and Necessity. Harvard University Press.
• Keefe, Rosanna (2000). Theories of Vagueness. Cambridge University Press.
• Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1953). Philosophical Investigations. Wiley-Blackwell.
• Grice, H. Paul (1975). Logic and Conversation. In Maite Ezcurdia & Robert J. Stainton (eds.), The Semantics-Pragmatics Boundary in Philosophy. Broadview Press. pp. 47.
• Langton, Rae & Hornsby, Jennifer (1998). Free speech and illocution. Legal Theory 4 (1):21-37.

Exam (80%, duration: 1 hour and 30 minutes, reading time: 10 minutes) in the spring exam period.
Exercise (10%) and class participation (10%) in the WT.