THE PROBLEM OF MEANING IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE
DİL FELSEFESİNDE ANLAM SORUNU

Author : Ufuk ÖZEN BAYKENT
Number of pages : 497-508

Abstract

Some of the main topics for discussion in the philosophy of language are meaning, reference, definite descriptions, the relation of language and thought and speech acts. When the discussions in the philosophy of language are concerned, the problem of meaning seems to appear as one of the basic ones. With regards to the problem of meaning, what the smallest meaningful linguistic unit in language is and how the words and sentences are provided with meaning have arisen as popular discussion topics. The philosophy of language was accepted as a field in philosophy since the beginning of the twentieth century and the present study deals with a major problem in the philosophy of language namely, the problem of meaning in depth. When the problem of meaning is studied, it appears that there are two basic grounds for discussion. The first one is about what makes a linguistic unit meaningful and this problem is approached by the mentalist approach and behaviouristic approach from two different perspectives. The second ground for discussion is related to the smallest meaningful unit in language. The word-atomists argue that it is the word while the sentence-atomists claim that it is the sentence. Actually, when the philosophers from Heracleitus until today who discuss the concept of language are studied as a whole, it is possible to conclude with four approaches to the meaning in language. The present study explores and discusses the mentalist, the referential, the behaviouristic and the pragmatic approaches with detailed references to the philosophers who had a role in framing them. The discussion leads us to how each approach contributed to the problem of linguistic meaning. It appears that each approach influenced the other by enabling it to see other aspects of the concepts and that is how the concept of meaning is discussed in different dimensions all through the history of philosophy.

Keywords

Meaning, Language, Reference, Frege, Russell

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