Anthropologism, naturalism, and the pragmatic study of language  

Oleh:

Medina, Jose

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Journal of Pragmatics: An Interdiciplinary Journal of Language Studies vol. 36 no. 3 (Mar. 2004), page 549-573.
Topik: Context/contextualism; Conversation analysis; Language learning; Meaning; Semantic skepticism; Wittgenstein
Fulltext: Medina_Jos.pdf (233.98KB)

Isi artikel

This paper is a critical assessment of Wittgenstein’s anthropological perspective and Quine’s naturalistic perspective as solutions to the problem of semantic indeterminacy. The three stages of my argument try to establish the following points: (1) that Wittgenstein and Quine offer two substantially different philosophical models of language learning and cognitive development; (2) that unlikeQuine’s naturalism,Wittgenstein’s anthropologismis not committed to semantic skepticism; and (3) that Wittgenstein’s anthropological perspective is a more promising approach to pragmatics because it avoids the pitfalls of intellectualism and the philosophical strictures of empiricism and behaviorism. The central conclusion of the argument is the thesis of contextual determinacy, according to which meanings are only radically indeterminate in the abstract but become contextually determinate in specific conversational settings and interactions. I offer further support for this thesis in a discussion of recent ethnomethodological research in conversation analysis.

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