Meaning

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Distribution within Humanities and Social Sciences

Kinds of Meaning

  • affective meaning
  • changing meaning
  • construct meaning
  • cultural meaning
  • different meaning
  • linguistic meaning
  • local meaning
  • multiple meaning
  • new meaning
  • personal meaning
  • physical meaning
  • psychological meaning
  • same meaning
  • sentence meaning
  • shared meaning
  • social meaning
  • specific meaning
  • symbolic meaning
  • very meaning
  • word meaning

  • Terms modified by Meaning

  • meaning making

  • Selected Abstracts


    DISENTANGLING THE MEANING OF MULTISOURCE PERFORMANCE RATING SOURCE AND DIMENSION FACTORS

    PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 4 2009
    BRIAN J. HOFFMAN
    We extend multisource performance rating (MSPR) construct validity research by examining the pattern of relationships between factor analytically derived MSPR rating source and performance dimension factors and externally measured constructs (e.g., assessment center dimensions, personality constructs, and intelligence). The pattern of relationships among MSPR dimensions and external constructs provides modest construct validity evidence for the MSPR dimensions. In addition, MSPR source factors were differentially correlated with externally measured constructs, suggesting that MSPR source effects represent substantively meaningful source specific variance, as opposed to bias. These findings are discussed in the context of managerial skill diagnosis and the efficacy of collecting performance data from multiple sources. [source]


    III ,,ON THE MEANING OF THE WORD ,PLATONISM' IN THE EXPRESSION ,MATHEMATICAL PLATONISM'

    PROCEEDINGS OF THE ARISTOTELIAN SOCIETY (HARDBACK), Issue 1 2005
    Jacques Bouveresse
    ABSTRACT The expression ,platonism in mathematics' or ,mathematical platonism' is familiar in the philosophy of mathematics at least since the use Paul Bernays made of it in his paper of 1934, ,Sur le Platonisme dans les Mathématiques'. But he was not the first to point out the similarities between the conception of the defenders of mathematical realism and the ideas of Plato. Poincaré had already stressed the ,platonistic' orientation of the mathematicians he called,Cantorian', as opposed to those who (like himself) were ,pragmatist' ones. I examine in this paper some very perplexing aspects of the use which is made at that time of a number of concepts, particularly ,idealism' (which generally designates what we would call ,mathematical realism') and ,empiricism' (which can designate almost any form of antirealism, even if, like for example intuitionism, it is not empiricist at all). There are, of course, historical reasons that may explain why it was for a time so easy and natural to use the words and the concepts in a way that may seem now very strange and to treat as if they were equivalent the two oppositions: realism/antirealism and idealism/empiricism. [source]


    PHILOSOPHY, THE RESTLESS HEART AND THE MEANING OF THEISM

    RATIO, Issue 4 2006
    John Haldane
    There is a common philosophical challenge that asks how things would be different if some supposed reality did not exist. Conceived in one way this can amount to trial by sensory verification. Even if that challenge is dismissible, however, the question of the relation of the purported reality to experience remains. Writing here in connection with the central claims, and human significance, of theism; and drawing on ideas suggested by C. S. Pierce, C. S. Lewis, Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas, I aim to turn the tables and argue that the broad structure and basic features of human cognitive and affective experience indicate their fulfilment in God. [source]


    Normativity and the Meaning of Endangered: Response to Waples et al.

    CONSERVATION BIOLOGY, Issue 6 2007

    No abstract is available for this article. [source]


    Review article: What's new in early medieval burial archaeology?

    EARLY MEDIEVAL EUROPE, Issue 1 2002
    Tania M. Dickinson
    Books reviewed in this article: John Hines, Karen Høilund Nielsen and Frank Siegmund (eds), The Pace of Change. Studies in Early,Medieval Chronology. Catherine E. Karkov, Kelley M. Wickham,Crowley and Bailey K. Young (eds), Spaces of the Living and the Dead: An Archaeological Dialogue. Sam Lucy, The Early Anglo,Saxon Cemeteries of East Yorkshire. An Analysis and Reinterpretation. Elizabeth O'Brien, Post,Roman Britain to Anglo,Saxon England: Burial Practices Reviewed. Nick Stoodley, The Spindle and the Spear. A Critical Enquiry into the Construction and Meaning of Gender in the Early Anglo,Saxon Burial Rite. [source]


    Bruner's Search for Meaning: A Conversation between Psychology and Anthropology

    ETHOS, Issue 1 2008
    Cheryl Mattingly
    The articles in this special issue situate Bruner's meaning-centered approach to psychology and his groundbreaking work on narrative in the broader context of the developmental trajectory of both of fields of inquiry. Bruner's work has been enormously influential in the subfields of cultural psychology and psychological anthropology, especially because of his important contributions to our understanding of the intimate relationship between culture and mind. We examine Bruner's past and ongoing engagement with such luminary figures as Lev Vygotsky, Jean Piaget, Alfred Kroeber, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Clifford Geertz to highlight points of convergence and tension between his version of cultural psychology and contemporary theorizing and practice in psychological anthropology. We also review his practical and theoretical contributions to the fields of medicine, law, and education. [Jerome Bruner, cultural psychology, psychological anthropology, meaning, narrative, mind, culture] [source]


    Normative Phenomenalism: On Robert Brandom's Practice-Based Explanation of Meaning

    EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, Issue 1 2005
    Ronald Loeffler
    First page of article [source]


    The Theory of Truth in the Theory of Meaning

    EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY, Issue 2 2004
    Gurpreet S. Rattan
    First page of article [source]


    Modifying First-Year Textbook Dialogues along a Hymesian Model of Meaning: A Theory of In-Depth Language Processing for the L2 Classroom

    FOREIGN LANGUAGE ANNALS, Issue 2 2000
    Lana Rings
    Speakers' "scripts" (established patterns of discourse) and "world" knowlege (the often culture-specific understanding of verbal and nonverbal constructs) are important features of any meaningful exchange of discourse. This article contends that foreign language learners will produce a higher level of language if they are made aware of , and given the opportunity to manipulate , such extralinguistic variables with regard to the texts they study. Whenever possible, teaching materials (e.g., textbook dialogues, autotaped or videotaped texts) should include the context-based information necessary for higher-level language processing. The author also describes a "stop-gap" teaching strategy by which students imagine and describe the full import of "decontextualized" examples of the foreign language. Finally, a tentative model for research on context-based language learning is presented. [source]


    The architecture of ethnic logic: Exploring the Meaning of the Built Environment in the ,Mixed' City Of Lod , Israel

    GEOGRAFISKA ANNALER SERIES B: HUMAN GEOGRAPHY, Issue 3-4 2002
    Haim Yacobi
    This article analyses the evolution of the built environment in Israel's ,mixed cities' in Israel; sites shaped by the logic of ethno,nationalism, and characterized by patterns of segregation between the Jewish dominant majority and the Arab subordinate minority. The paper investigates the changes and dynamics of the urban landscape from the British Mandate period to recent times, focusing on the interrelations between ideology and architecture in its wider sense, i.e. referring to the practices of urban design and planning. The production of urban landscapes in Israeli ,mixed cities', I will argue, is a result of the social construction of an ethnic logic, and thus cannot be seen as autonomous from the existing socio,political context. Rather, I would propose, the architecture of the ,mixed city' reflects on one hand, and shapes on the other the struggle over identity, memory and belonging, rooted in urban colonialism discourse. Empirically, this paper focuses on the city of Lod/Lydda where as in other previously Palestinian cities, a strategy of colonization had been implemented, forming the city,s central planning policy since the Mandate period. The paper analyzes in detail various aspects and sites of this process, and explores the role of planners and architects in the construction of a sense of place in tangible as well as discursive levels, which are often neglected in the body of knowledge that deals with urban,ethnic conflicts. [source]


    Maternal distancing and event memory at 20 months

    INFANT AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT, Issue 4 2003
    Nathalie Prudhomme
    Abstract Maternal distancing strategies (Sigel, 1993 in The Development and Meaning of Psychological Distance, Cocking R, Renninger KA (eds). Erlbaum: Hillsdale, NJ; 141,158) with 20-month-olds were analysed during a mother,child interaction in a free play situation. Then, they were related to memory performance of the children as assessed by the elicited imitation paradigm with 4 three-step sequences of actions (Bauer, Hertsgaard, Child Dev. 1993; 64:1204). The aim of this work was to (1) confirm that the Sigel's model of distancing could be used with very young children under two; (2) study relationships between maternal distancing that stimulate representational competence of the child and memory performance of the children. Results showed two different patterns of correlations depending on the sequence type: for enabling sequences, significant positive correlations were obtained for the first two distancing levels whereas for arbitrary sequences no correlation was found whatever the distancing level. As discussed, the first pattern brings new arguments in support of declarative memory before the age of 2 years and reframes the memory development in a Vygotskyian interactionist perspective. The second pattern of correlations calls for replication and more investigation about the processes implied in memory of very young children for different sequence types. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


    Corporate reputation: Meaning and measurement

    INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT REVIEWS, Issue 2 2005
    Rosa Chun
    Corporate reputation has attracted interest from a wide range of academic disciplines. It is also a growing focus for business and media attention. This paper examines the construct of corporate reputation, first by untangling the terminological problems that have been caused by the interdisciplinary nature of much of the earlier work in the area. The construct of reputation and the allied constructs of image and identity are each reviewed. A structure is proposed in which the three constructs can be seen as labelling different but allied concepts. I then move on to consider how reputation has been measured. The paper uncovers considerable confusion in the use of what might appear to be basic terms and links this to a subsequent lack of grounded measurement tools in the sector, until relatively recently. With a clearer understanding of the construct of corporate reputation and the allied constructs of image and identity, researchers are now well placed to test the relationships widely claimed by practitioners between corporate reputation and other variables such as commercial performance and employee and customer satisfaction. The review ends by illustrating some of the issues that can be assessed from the basis of a clearer conceptualization of reputation and its measurement. [source]


    Can Basic Individual Differences Shed Light on the Construct Meaning of Assessment Center Evaluations?

    INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SELECTION AND ASSESSMENT, Issue 1 2003
    J. M. Collins
    The construct meaning of assessment center evaluations is an important unresolved issue in I/O psychology. This study hypothesized that Cognitive Ability and personality traits are primary correlates of evaluators' overall assessment ratings (OARs). Meta,analysis results based on 65 correlations indicate the following mean construct,level correlations with OARs: .67 for Cognitive Ability, .50 for Extraversion, .35 for Emotional Stability, .25 for Openness, and .17 for Agreeableness; yielding a multiple R of .84. These findings support our hypothesis and cast light on the construct meaning of assessment center evaluations. [source]


    Elizabeth Rowe's Fictional and Familiar Letters: Exemplarity, Enthusiasm, and the Production of Posthumous Meaning

    JOURNAL FOR EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES, Issue 1 2006
    Melanie Bigold
    First page of article [source]


    Commentary on McSherry W, Cash K & Ross L (2004) Meaning of spirituality: implications for nursing practice.

    JOURNAL OF CLINICAL NURSING, Issue 1 2006
    Journal of Clinical Nursing 1
    [source]


    Meaning and measurement: an inclusive model of evidence in health care

    JOURNAL OF EVALUATION IN CLINICAL PRACTICE, Issue 2 2001
    Ross E.G. Upshur
    Abstract Evidence-based approaches are assuming prominence in many health-care fields. The core ideas of evidence-based health care derive from clinical epidemiology and general internal medicine. The concept of evidence has yet to be analysed systematically; what counts as evidence may vary across disciplines. Furthermore, the contribution of the social sciences, particularly qualitative methodology, has received scant attention. This paper outlines a model of evidence that describes four distinct but related types of evidence: qualitative-personal; qualitative-general; quantitative-general and quantitative-personal. The rationale for these distinctions and the implications of these for a theory of evidence are discussed. [source]


    The Limits of Meaning: Case Studies in the Anthropology of Christianity by Matthew Engelke and Matt Tomlinson (eds.)

    JOURNAL OF LATIN AMERICAN & CARIBBEAN ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 1 2008
    Erik KjeldgaardArticle first published online: 28 JUN 200
    No abstract is available for this article. [source]


    Emotional Meaning and the Cognitive Organization of Ethnozoological Domains

    JOURNAL OF LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 2 2001
    Justin M. Nolan
    This article shows that the cognitive structure of semantic ethnozoological domains is influenced by the culturally constituted affective values of these domains. Data were collected from American undergraduates who free listed the generic constituents of four ethnozoological life-forms: birds, fish, snakes, and wugs. Participants indicated on each free list which items they liked and disliked, and which single item best represented the life-form domain. They were also asked whether they liked or disliked the exemplar and the domain. Concordance was found between the attitude toward the life form (i.e., whether it is liked or disliked) and the salience of similarly judged items, and between the attitude toward the life form and the attitude toward the exemplar. Concordance was also found between the attitude toward the exemplar and the salience of similarly judged items. The exemplars of each life-form domain are highly salient overall, and the proportion of liked and disliked items in the free lists generally corresponds with the attitude toward the life-form domain. All findings support our hypothesis that emotional meaning and culturally conditioned attitudes play a significant role in the organization of ethnozoological domains. [source]


    Understanding and Responding to Patients' Requests for Assistance in Dying

    JOURNAL OF NURSING SCHOLARSHIP, Issue 4 2003
    Judith Kennedy Schwarz
    Purpose: To explore how nurses experience and respond to patients' requests for assistance in dying (AID). Design and Methods: A phenomenological study of 10 self-selected nurses. Findings: Four major themes: Being Open to Hear and Hearing; Interpreting and Responding to the Meaning; Responding to Persistent Requests for AID, and Reflections. When faced with persistent requests for AID, participants provided a continuum of interventions: refusal, providing palliative care that might secondarily hasten dying, respecting and not interfering with patients' or families' plans to hasten dying, and providing varying types and degrees of direct AID. Their responses were context-driven rather than rule-mandated, and they drew a distinction between secondarily hastening and directly causing death. Conclusions: Few nurses in this study unequivocally agreed or refused to directly help a patient die. Most struggled alone and in silence to find a morally and legally acceptable way to help patients who persisted in requesting AID. Regardless of how they responded, many described feelings of conflict, guilt, and moral distress. [source]


    Making Meaning: Women's Birth Narratives

    JOURNAL OF OBSTETRIC, GYNECOLOGIC & NEONATAL NURSING, Issue 4 2004
    FAAN professor, Lynn Clark Callister RN
    Birth stories are personal narratives grounded in the pivotal life experience of giving birth. Richly descriptive birth narratives from culturally diverse childbearing women document the importance of listening to the voices of women. Benefits of sharing birth stories include the opportunity for integration of a major event into the framework of a mother's life; the opportunity to share a significant life experience; the opportunity to discuss fears, concerns, "missing pieces" or feelings of inadequacy or disappointment; the opportunity for the woman to gain an understanding of her strengths; and the opportunity to connect with other women. Providing women with the opportunity to share their birth stories is an important nursing intervention. [source]


    Understanding the Search for Meaning in Life: Personality, Cognitive Style, and the Dynamic Between Seeking and Experiencing Meaning

    JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY, Issue 2 2008
    Michael F. Steger
    ABSTRACT Although several theories assert that understanding the search for meaning in life is important, empirical research on this construct is sparse. Three studies provide the first extensive effort to understand the correlates of the search for meaning in a multistudy research program. Assessed were relations between search for meaning and well-being, cognitive style, and the Big Five, Big Three, Approach/Avoidance, and Interest models of personality, with a particular emphasis on understanding the correlates of search for meaning that are independent of presence of meaning. Conceptual models of the relation between search and presence were tested. Findings suggest that people lacking meaning search for it; the search for meaning did not appear to lead to its presence. Study 3 found that basic motive dispositions moderated relations between search for meaning and its presence. Results highlight the importance of basic personality dispositions in understanding the search for meaning and its correlates. [source]


    BEFORE THE ORIGINAL POSITION: The Neo-Orthodox Theology of the Young John Rawls

    JOURNAL OF RELIGIOUS ETHICS, Issue 2 2007
    Eric Gregory
    ABSTRACT This paper examines a remarkable document that has escaped critical attention within the vast literature on John Rawls, religion, and liberalism: Rawls's undergraduate thesis, "A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith: An Interpretation Based on the Concept of Community" (1942). The thesis shows the extent to which a once regnant version of Protestant theology has retreated into seminaries and divinity schools where it now also meets resistance. Ironically, the young Rawls rejected social contract liberalism for reasons that anticipate many of the claims later made against him by secular and religious critics. The thesis and Rawls's late unpublished remarks on religion and World War II offer a new dimension to his intellectual biography. They show the significance of his humanist response to the moral impossibility of political theology. Moreover, they also reveal a kind of Rawlsian piety marginalized by contemporary debates over religion and liberalism. [source]


    Learning from and responding to students' questions: The authoritative and dialogic tension

    JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN SCIENCE TEACHING, Issue 2 2010
    Orlando G. Aguiar
    Abstract In this study we present an analysis of classroom interactions initiated by students' wonderment questions. Our interest in such events arises from their potential to stimulate active intellectual engagement in classrooms, which can impact upon the subsequent development of the classroom discourse. In investigating this issue we shall address the following research question: How do student questions impact upon the teaching explanatory structure and modify the form of the ongoing classroom discourse, in selected science lessons? From data collected in a Brazilian secondary school we have selected three classroom episodes, with large differences in both the context in which the student's question emerges and in the communicative approach developed in response to it. The analysis, based on the framework proposed by Mortimer and Scott [Mortimer and Scott (2003). Meaning making in secondary science classrooms. Maidenhead: Open University Press], shows that questions made by students are important in providing feedback from students to the teacher, enabling adjustments to the teaching explanatory structure. These adjustments sometimes occur smoothly, at other times with major changes to the features of the classroom discourse, and elsewhere with misunderstanding and disagreement. The data also suggest the need to consider students' intentions and their active participation in the negotiation of both the content and structure of classroom discourse. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 47:174,193, 2010 [source]


    Human Dignity and the Claim of Meaning: Athenian Tragic Drama and Supreme Court Opinions

    JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY, Issue 1 2002
    James Boyd White
    I am going to bring together what may seem at first to be two extremely different institutions for the creation of public meaning, namely classical Athenian tragedy and the Supreme Court opinion.1 My object is not so much to draw lines of similarity and distinction between them, as a cultural analyst might do, as to try to capture something of what I believe is centrally at work in both institutions, in fact essential to what each at its best achieves. I can frame it as a question: How is it that the best instances of each genre (for I will be talking only about the best) work to resist the ever,present impulse to trivialize human life and experience,certainly well known in our own era-and instead confer upon the individual, and his or her sufferings and struggles in the world, a kind of dignity? I think that something like this is in fact the core of the most important achievements of both institutions, and that in both cases it is simultaneously imaginative (or literary) and political in nature. [source]


    An Assessment of the Terminology Used by Diplomates and Students to Describe the Character of Equine Mitral and Aortic Valve Regurgitant Murmurs: Correlations with the Physical Properties of the Sounds

    JOURNAL OF VETERINARY INTERNAL MEDICINE, Issue 3 2003
    Jonathan M. Naylor
    Twenty students and 16 diplomates listened to 7 recordings made from 7 horses with either aortic (n = 3) or mitral valve (n = 4) regurgitant murmurs. A total of 30 different terms were used to describe the character of these murmurs. However, only 4 terms were used in a repeatable and consistent manner. Most people described the character of a given mitral or aortic valve murmur with 1 or 2 terms. Diplomates drew from a pool of terms that was about half the size of that used by students,.1 ±2.0 terms for diplomats (mean ±1 SD) versus 13.1 ±1.8 terms for students (P < .001). Only blowing, honking, buzzing, and musical were markedly associated with the recording played. Frequency analysis of the murmurs allowed them to be classified as containing harmonics (n = 4) or not containing harmonics (n = 3). Blowing was used to describe murmurs without harmonics on 39 of 48 occasions and corresponds to the term noisy used in some older descriptions of equine murmurs. Honking, musical, and buzzing were markedly associated with murmurs that contained harmonics; these terms were used 23, 13, and 12 of a possible 64 times, respectively. The frequency of buzzing and honking murmurs (72.7 ±9.3 and 88.4 ±46.3 Hz, respectively) was markedly lower than that of musical murmurs (156.8 ±81.1 Hz) (all P values <.01). Honking murmurs (0.392 ±0.092 seconds) were shorter than those described as buzzing or musical (0.496 ±0.205 and 0.504 ±0.116 seconds, respectively). The data suggest that the terminology for the character of aortic and mitral regurgitant murmurs should be restricted to 4 terms: blowing, honking, buzzing, and musical. Honking, buzzing, and musical describe murmurs with a peak dominant frequency and harmonics; blowing describes murmurs without a peak frequency. Effective communication could be enhanced by playing examples of reference sounds when these terms are taught so that nomenclature is used more uniformly. Key words: Cardiac; Heart; Learning; Meaning. [source]


    The Privatization of Public Legal Rights: How Manufacturers Construct the Meaning of Consumer Law

    LAW & SOCIETY REVIEW, Issue 3 2009
    Shauhin A. Talesh
    This article demonstrates how the content and meaning of California's consumer protection laws were shaped by automobile manufacturers, the very group these laws were designed to regulate. My analysis draws on and links two literatures that examine the relationship between law and organizations but often overlook one another: political science studies of how businesses influence public legal institutions, and neo-institutional sociology studies of how organizations shape law within their organizational field. By integrating these literatures, I develop an "institutional-political" theory that demonstrates how organizations' construction of law and compliance within an organizational field shapes the meaning of law among legislators and judges. This study examines case law and more than 35 years of California legislative history concerning its consumer warranty laws. Using institutional and political analysis, I show how auto manufacturers, who were initially subject to powerful consumer protection laws, weakened the impact of these laws by creating dispute resolution venues. The legislature and courts subsequently incorporated private dispute resolution venues into statutes and court decisions and made consumer rights and remedies largely contingent on consumers first using manufacturer-sponsored venues. Organizational venue creation resulted in public legal rights being redefined and controlled by private organizations. [source]


    Teaching and Learning Guide for: Locutionary, Illocutionary, Perlocutionary

    LINGUISTICS & LANGUAGE COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 9 2010
    Mikhail Kissine
    This guide accompanies the following article: Mikhail Kissine, ,Locutionary, Illocutionary, Perlocutionary', Language and Linguistics Compass 2/6 (2008) pp. 1189,1202. DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-818x.2008.00093.x. The terms locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act originate from Austin's classical How to do with words. The corresponding notions, however, prove difficult to define. Yet, lack of careful delineating of each level can lead to important theoretical confusions. This Teaching and Learning Guide explains why proper understanding of Austin's trichotomy is crucial for semantics and pragmatics. Author's Introduction Most contemporary discussions in semantics and pragmatics employ , implicitly or explicitly , some or all of the concepts of locutionary,illocutionary or perlocutionary acts. These notions originate from Austin's posthumous and notoriously intricate book, How to do things with words. The point of interest for the linguist, however, is not so much the exegesis of Austin's ideas, as the precise delimitation of these levels of meaning. First, it is important to characterise the locutionary level , which falls short of any illocutionary force , to avoid contaminating analyses of utterance meanings with matters relative to the illocutionary level, viz. to the speech act performed. Second, the precise definition of illocutionary acts is an extremely difficult matter. However, the first, imperative step must be a clear demarcation between perlocutionary acts , relative to causal effects of the utterances , and the utterance's illocutionary force. Third, to assess theories of illocutionary forces, one must take into account the requirements for psychological and empirical plausibility. For instance, classical Gricean theories of illocutionary force attribution link it with the cognitive capacity to perform complex multi-layered mental state attributions, which is incompatible with the data available on the pragmatic and cognitive functioning of young children. In sum, gaining better understanding of the tripartite distinction between the locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary levels is not a taxonomical exercise, but a prerequisite for anyone willing to tackle semantic and/or pragmatic issues with the right tools. Suggested Reading Austin, J.L. (1975) How to do things with words, Second edition, Oxford, Oxford University Press. Lecture VIII. Difficult reading, but essential to understand Austin's intuitions and the origin of the debate. Strawson, P.F. (1964) "Intention and convention in speech acts", Philosophical Review, 73, 439,60. Classical criticism of Austin's claim abut the conventionality of illocutionary acts and first formulation of a Gricean theory of speech acts. Strawson, P.F. (1973) "Austin and ,Locutionary meaning'", in I. Berlin et al. (eds.) Essays on J.L. Austin, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 46,68. This equally classical paper sheds light onto the difficult notions of rhetic and locutionary acts; it paves the way for using these concepts interchangeably. Recanati, F. (1987) Meaning and Force. The pragmatics of performative utterances, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Chapter 9. This is a lucid discussion and elaboration of Strawson's conception of the locuitonary act as a potential for the illocutionary level. Wilson, D. and Sperber, D. (1988) "Mood and the analysis of non-declarative sentences", in J. Dancy et al. (eds.) Human Agency, Language, Duty and Value. Philosophical essayes in honour of J.O. Urmson, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 77,101. This paper gives important reasons for not confusing the analysis of mood , of the locutionary level , with the analysis of speech acts. Kissine, M. (2009) "Illocutionary forces and what is said", Mind and Language, 24, 122,38. Provides a definition of locutionary acts as linguistic representations of mental states, and lays grounds for a theory of speech acts as reasons to believe or to act. Bach, K. (1994) "Conversational impliciture", Mind and Language, 9, 124,62. An important defence of the distinction between illocutionary and locutionary acts. However, the reader should be warned that Bach conceives of locutionary acts as context-independent propositional radicals, which is not a self-evident position. Alston (2000) Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, Chapter 2. Contains a clear and lucid criticism of theories that confuse illocutionary and perlocutionary levels. Dominicy, M. (2008) "Epideictic rhetoric and the representation of human decision and choice", in K. Korta and J. Garmendia (eds.) Meaning, Intentions, and Argumentation, Stanford, CSLI, 179,207. This paper contains a useful test for distinguishing verbs that describe illocutionary acts form those that describe perlocutionary acts. It is also the first proposal to formulate the illocutionary/perlocutionary divide in Davidsonian terms. Focus Questions 1,What kind of philosophy of action is called for by the distinction between locutions, perlocutions and illocutions? 2,Should the locutionary level be always fully propositional? 3,Can illocutionary acts be characterised in terms of prototypical perlocutional effects? 4,Should illocutionary acts be divided in conventional (institutional) and non-conventional (non-insitutional) ones? 5,Are there good reasons for singling out a locutionary level? 6,,Does the attribution of illocutionary forces presuppose a complex mindreading process? Connexion with to Related Material in Lectures or Discussions 1,The distinction between the locutionary and illocutionary levels is crucial for any discussion about the semantics/pragmatics interface. Many scholars hastily characterise semantics as related to sentence-meaning and pragmatics as concerning the speech act performed. However, one should not take for granted that any level where the meaning is context-dependant is necessarily that of the illocutionary act performed. 2,This distinction can also be relevant for the discussions about the meaning of moods. For instance, the imperative mood is often analysed in terms of the directive illocutionary force. However, there are cases where utterances of imperative sentences do not correspond to a directive speech act. 3,The distinction between perlocutionary and illocutionary acts remains central for any attempt to classify or to define illocutionary forces. 4,Different conceptions of illocutionary acts are important for discussions about the ontogeny and phylogeny of the pragmatic dimension(s) of linguistic competence. [source]


    Truth in Virtue of Meaning.

    METAPHILOSOPHY, Issue 3 2010
    By Gillian Russell
    First page of article [source]


    Meaning, Truth, and Phenomenology

    METAPHILOSOPHY, Issue 4 2000
    Mark Bevir
    This essay approaches Derrida through a consideration of his writings on Saussure and Husserl. Derrida is right to insist, following Saussure, on a relational theory of meaning: words do not have a one-to-one correspondence with their referents. But he is wrong to insist on a purely differential theory of meaning: words can refer to reality within the context of a body of knowledge. Similarly, Derrida is right to reject Husserl's idea of presence: no truths are simply given to consciousness. But he is wrong to reject the very idea of objective knowledge: we can defend a notion of objective knowledge couched in terms of a comparison of rival bodies of theories. The essay concludes by considering the implications of the preceding arguments for the enterprise of phenomenology. [source]


    HOT Theories of Meaning: The Link Between Language and Theory of Mind

    MIND & LANGUAGE, Issue 5 2006
    ANNE REBOUL
    Through analysis of their argument and a re-examination of the literature, I show that autistic speakers are not a counterexample to HOT theories, but, conversely, that such theories are necessary to account for their communicative peculiarities. [source]