Philosophy of the Act and the Pragmatics of Fiction
Philosophy of the Act and the Pragmatics of Fiction

Author: Tahir Wood

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2021-06-02

Total Pages: 163

ISBN-13: 1527570428

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This is a ground-breaking work that offers a new explanation of the power and popularity of literary fictional texts. It does this by explaining the multiple dimensions of any fictional text and why it is that fictional literature cannot be reduced to a subset of these dimensions. This book offers an expansion of the field of pragmatics, “the philosophy of the act,” in which the three categories of fictional actors—author, character and reader—can be given their due. It achieves this by bringing together schools of thought that are too often kept apart: Anglo-American pragmatics and European philosophy. Drawing on a range of thinkers, from Charles Morris and John Searle to Friedrich Nietzsche, M. M. Bakhtin and Georg Lukács, the book applies a unique framework to a range of modern fictional texts. Key concepts here are ethical intention and the agon of authorship.

The Language of Fiction
The Language of Fiction

Author: Emar Maier

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021-10-15

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 0192585355

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This volume brings together new research on fiction from the fields of philosophy and linguistics. Fiction has long been a topic of interest in philosophy, but recent years have also seen a surge in work on fictional discourse at the intersection between linguistics and philosophy of language. In particular, there has been a growing interest in examining long-standing issues concerning fiction from a perspective that is informed both by philosophy and linguistic theory. Following a detailed introduction by the editors, The Language of Fiction contains 14 chapters by leading scholars in linguistics and philosophy, organized into three parts. Part I, 'Truth, Reference, and Imagination', offers new, interdisciplinary perspectives on some of the central themes from the philosophy of fiction: What is fictional truth? How do fictional names refer? What kind of speech act is involved in telling a fictional story? What is the relation between fiction and imagination? Part II, 'Storytelling', deals with themes originating from the study of narrative: How do we infer a coherent story from a sequence of event descriptions? And how do we interpret the words of impersonal or unreliable narrators? Part III, 'Perspective Shift', focuses on an alleged key characteristic of fictional narratives, namely how we get access to the fictional characters' inner lives, through a variety of literary techniques for representing what they say, think, or see. The volume will be of interest to scholars from graduate level upwards in the fields of discourse analysis, semantics and pragmatics, philosophy of language, psychology, cognitive science, and literary studies.

Powerful Prose
Powerful Prose

Author: R. L. Victoria Pöhls

Publisher: transcript Verlag

Published: 2021-10-31

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 3839458803

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

What makes a reading experience »powerful«? This volume brings together literary scholars, linguists, and empirical researchers who tackle the question by investigating the effects and reader responses generated by selected extracts of literary prose. The twelve contributions theorize this widely-used, but to date insufficiently studied notion, and provide insights into the therefore still mysterious-seeming power of literary fiction. The collection explores a variety of stylistic as well as readerly and psychological features responsible for short- and long-term effects - topics of great interest to those interested or specialized in literary studies and narratology, (cognitive) stylistics, empirical literary studies and reader response theory.

The Semantics-Pragmatics Boundary in Philosophy
The Semantics-Pragmatics Boundary in Philosophy

Author: Maite Ezcurdia

Publisher: Broadview Press

Published: 2013-03-14

Total Pages: 591

ISBN-13: 1554810698

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The boundary between semantics and pragmatics has been important since the early twentieth century, but in the last twenty-five years it has become the central issue in the philosophy of language. This anthology collects classic philosophical papers on the topic, along with recent key contributions. It stresses not only the nature of the boundary, but also its importance for philosophy generally.

Speech Act Theory and Pragmatics
Speech Act Theory and Pragmatics

Author: John Searle

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 9400989644

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In the study of language, as in any other systematic study, there is no neutral terminology. Every technical term is an expression of the assumptions and theoretical presuppositions of its users; and in this introduction, we want to clarify some of the issues that have surrounded the assumptions behind the use of the two terms "speech acts" and "pragmatics". The notion of a speech act is fairly well understood. The theory of speech acts starts with the assumption that the minimal unit of human communica tion is not a sentence or other expression, but rather the performance of certain kinds of acts, such as making statements, asking questions, giving orders, describing, explaining, apologizing, thanking, congratulating, etc. Characteristically, a speaker performs one or more of these acts by uttering a sentence or sentences; but the act itself is not to be confused with a sentence or other expression uttered in its performance. Such types of acts as those exemplified above are called, following Austin, illocutionary acts, and they are standardly contrasted in the literature with certain other types of acts such as perlocutionary acts and propositional acts. Perlocutionary acts have to do with those effects which our utterances have on hearers which go beyond the hearer's understanding of the utterance. Such acts as convincing, persuading, annoying, amusing, and frightening are all cases of perlocutionary acts.

Inquiries in Philosophical Pragmatics
Inquiries in Philosophical Pragmatics

Author: Fabrizio Macagno

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-04-20

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 303056696X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Together with the first volume “Inquiries in philosophical pragmatics: Theoretical developments,” this book collects contributions that represent the state of the art on the interconnection between pragmatics and philosophy. While the first volume presents the philosophical dimension of pragmatics, showing the path from theoretical advances to practical uses and approaches, this second volume offers a specular view on this discipline. Instead of adopting the top-down view of the first volume, this collection of eleven chapters starts from the analysis of linguistic data – which include texts and discourses in different languages, different types of dialogues, different types of interactions, and different modes for expressing meaning – looking for the regularities that govern our production and processing. The chapters are ordered according to their relationship with the themes and methods that define the field of pragmatics. The more explored and classical linguistic issues such as prototype-based generalizations, scalar implicatures, and temporal ordering, lead gradually to the more recent and debated topic of slurs and pejorative language, and finally to the interdisciplinary and more pioneering works addressing specific context of language use, such as marketplace interactions, courtroom speeches, schizophrenic discourse, literary texts for children, and multimedia communication. Chapter 12 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

New Essays on Frege
New Essays on Frege

Author: Gisela Bengtsson

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-01-12

Total Pages: 186

ISBN-13: 3319711865

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This volume collects nine essays that investigate the work of Gottlob Frege. The contributors address Frege’s work in relation to literature and fiction (Dichtung), the humanities (Geisteswissenschaften), and science (Wissenschaft). Overall, the essays consider internal connections between different aspects of Frege’s work while acknowledging the importance of its philosophical context. There are also further common strands between the papers, such as the relation between Frege’s and Wittgenstein’s approaches to philosophical investigations, the relation between Frege and Kant, and the place of Frege’s work in the philosophical landscape more generally. The volume is therefore of direct relevance to several current debates in philosophy in general, in addition to Frege and Wittgenstein research in particular. Even though Frege’s great significance for contemporary philosophy is not disputed, the question of how we are to understand the character and aims of his project is debated. The debate has a starting point in Frege’s specific conception of logic. The volume elucidates this conception as well as the relation between natural language and the Begriffsschrift. It will help philosophers, researchers, and students better understand the nuances of this great thinker. By extension, it will also help readers seeking to understand Wittgenstein’s approach to philosophical difficulties and his struggle to find an apt form of presentation for his philosophical investigations.

Speech Acts
Speech Acts

Author: John R. Searle

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1969-01-02

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 9780521096263

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

'This small but tightly packed volume is easily the most substantial discussion of speech acts since John Austin's How To Do Things With Words and one of the most important contributions to the philosophy of language in recent decades.'--Philosophical Quarterly

The Nature of Fiction
The Nature of Fiction

Author: Gregory Currie

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1990-10-26

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 9780521381277

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This important book provides a theory about the nature of fiction, and about the relation between the author, the reader and the fictional text. The approach is philosophical: that is to say, the author offers an account of key concepts such as fictional truth, fictional characters, and fiction itself. The book argues that the concept of fiction can be explained partly in terms of communicative intentions, partly in terms of a condition which excludes relations of counterfactual dependence between the world and the text. This communicative model is then applied to the following problems: how can something be 'true in the story' without being explicitly stated in the text? In what ways does interpreting a fictional story depend upon grasping its author's intentions? Is there always a unique best interpretation of a fictional text? What is the correct semantics for fictional names? What is the nature of our emotional response to a fictional work? In answering these questions the author explores the complex interaction between author, reader, and text. This interaction requires the reader to construct a 'fictional author' - a character in the story whose personality, beliefs and emotional states must be interpreted if the reader is to grasp the meaning of the work.