Hili Razinsky

LANCOG, University of Lisbon

Reconsidering Linguistic Communication

25 October 2019, 16:00

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa

Sala Mattos Romão (Departamento de Filosofia)

Abstract: Communication is at the heart of language, but philosophy of language’s historical focus on objectivity on the one hand and the individual subject on the other tends to bias the analysis of communication and language. I will propose that communications happen within, and form, a Wittgensteinian public language. Yet rather than being reducible to public use (Hornsby), communication takes two in a strong sense: In communication full-blown people with attitudes address one another. Addressing is uttering with interactive forces, and rather than a hearer or an interpreter, it implies an addressee-addresser, and, in principle, an ongoing communication. Addressing implies potential communicative response, addresser’s and addressee’s intentionality, and some mutual understanding, but openness of meaning and response are constitutive of communication, forms of significant success included.