语言哲学视角下的意义用法

Abstract：the study of meaning is generally called semantics, which has bee a hot topic in the human scholarship. There are many discussions of meaning and use from different aspects. The relationship between meaning and use also can be studied from different points of view and using various approaches, such as a phoic approach, a logical approach, a semiotic approach and so on. This paper mainly from the philosophy aspect to analyze the meaning and use of language.

摘 要 ：对语言意义的研究成为语义学,如今已成为学术界研究的热点课题.对意义的研究多种多样,与此相关的,意义和用法之间的关系的谈论也随处可见.有许多学者从不同的视角对意义和用法进行过研究,比如从音位学方面,逻辑学方面,符号学方面等等.本文将主要从语言哲学的视角对言语意义和用法关系之间进行分析.

Key words: meaning；use；implicature

关 键 词 ：意义；用法；会话含义

作者简介：谈建宏,女（1987-）,汉,重庆忠县,重庆师范大学外国语学院2010级硕士研究生,专业：英语语言文学,研究方向：英语语言学.

[中图分类号]：H31 [文献标识码]：A

[文章编号]：1002-2139(2012)-11-0157-02

Meaning is the center topic of the philosophy of language, because the philosophers think that the study of meaning is the key to know oneself and the objective world. Meaning is in everywhere and refers to many aspects of language, such as the tone, the form of a word and the structure of a sentence, and even the same word can he different meanings in different contexts. Meaning of a word relates to its use.

1.To say something is to do something

In the latter part of How To Do Things With Words, Austin made a fresh start on the problem and considered it again that in what sense to say something is to do something. In his opinion, there are three senses in which saying something may be understood as doing something. They are the locutionary act、 illocutionary act and perlocutionary act. The locutionary act is, an ordinary one, what is said the form of utterance, the act of saying something, for example: if someone says “Open the door！” the locutionary act is the realization of the speaker’s utterance. The illocutionary act is what is done in uttering the word, the function of the word, the specific purpose that speaker’s he in mind, for example: the utterance “I promise to give it back tomorrow” is used to perform the illocutionary act of promising. The perlocutionary act is what is done by uttering the word. It is the effect on listener or the listener’s reaction, for example: the utterance “There is something in your back！” may cause the listener to panic and to look back his back. The perlocutionary of that utterance is to cause these emotion and action. One knows the force of an utterance if one knows what point the speaker had in making the utterance, and that is a matter of knowing something about what the speaker did or what she was up to. It is obvious that the use of a sentence would be specified when both the meaning of the words produced were specified and the force attaching to those words were specified. When one learns about the distinction between meaning and force, it seems like that a sentence’s meaning is one thing and the force is another thing. This opinion is also the center matter that many philosophers think about.

2.What words do by saying what speakers do