Saturday, February 10, 2007

Pär Segerdahl, Language Use, Ch.10, "The Speaker-Hearer Scheme of Communication"

Both the formal semantic approach and the communication-intention (speech-act) approach to the study of language find a distinction between conventional meaning and speaker meaning; that distinction is rejected by Segerdahl. And both approaches involve abstracting away from details fo concrete use. Segerdahl says that a proper appreciation of Wittgensein's notion of family resemblance can serve as a corrective to the dominant approaches to the study of language.

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