What is language, and how has it been conceived since Frege? How did the development of thought about language lead to a renewed interest in rhetoric in the twentieth century and ultimately to the problematological synthesis? These are the main questions treated in this book. A constant intertwining of historical and topical viewpoints characterizes the authors approach.
1. Introduction;
2. Part One: Logic and Language;
3. 1. Frege or the
Recourse to Formalization;
4. 1.1. Logic before Frege;
5. 1.2. Function and
concept;
6. 1.3. The ideography and the principles of Fregean language
theory;
7. 1.4. Sense and reference;
8. 1.5. Sense and meaning;
9. 1.6.
Conclusion;
10. 2. Russell's Synthesis;
11. 2.1. Formalization and natural
language;
12. 2.2. Definite descriptions;
13. 2.3. Propositional functions;
14. 2.4. The theory of types;
15. 2.5. Conclusion;
16. 3. Wittgenstein: From
Truth Tables to Ordinary Language and the Implications of Generalized
Analyticity;
17. 3.1. The Russellian heritage and its contradictions;
18.
3.2. The immanence of logic in language;
19. 3.3. Sense and reference;
20.
3.4. The language image (the picture theory of language);
21. 3.5. Negation
and the other logical constants;
22. 3.6. The Tractatus as initiation into
silence;
23. 3.7. Ordinary language and its rules;
24. 3.8. Conclusion:
Russell vs. Wittgenstein, a heritage;
25. 4. Hintikka or the Theory of
Possible Worlds;
26. 4.1. Introduction;
27. 4.2. Referential opacity;
28.
4.3. Ontological commitment and the elimination of single terms with Quine;
29. 4.4. Possible worlds and propositional attitudes;
30. 4.5. The
implications of the alternativeness relation and the theory of modus;
31.
4.6. The ontological commitment;
32. 4.7. The interpretation of
quantification as a question and answer game;
33. 4.8. Wittgenstein and
Hintikka: A concluding comparison;
34. Part Two: Language and Context;
35. 5.
Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics and Argumentation;
36. 5.1. The three levels of
language;
37. 5.2. Logical syntax;
38. 5.3. Formalization and natural
language;
39. 5.4. The renewal of argumentation;
40. 5.5. Perelman's new
rhetoric;
41. 5.6. Argumentation in language or the 'new linguistics' of
Anscombre and Ducrot;
42. 5.7. Conclusion;
43. 6. Dialectic and Questioning;
44. 6.1. Dialectic and Socrates;
45. 6.2. The middle dialogues: Dialectic and
the hypothetical method;
46. 6.3. The late period: The question of being or
the shift from the question to being;
47. 7. Argumentation in the Light of a
Theory of Questioning;
48. 7.1. Why language?;
49. 7.2. The two major
categories of forms;
50. 7.3. What is to be understood by 'question' and
'problem'?;
51. 7.4. The autonomization of the spoken and the written;
52.
7.5. The proposition as proposition of an answer;
53. 7.6. What is meaning?;
54. 7.7. Meaning as the locus of dialectic;
55. 7.8. Argumentation;
56. 7.9.
Literal and figurative meaning: The origin of messages 'between the lines';
57. Footnotes;
58. References
