Product Description: Saussure as a linguist and Wittgenstein as a philosopher of language are arguably the two most important figures in the development of twentieth-century linguistic thought. By pointing out what their ideas have in common, in spite of emanating from very different intellectual sources, this study breaks new ground...read more

Product Description: When you think about comparing breeds of dogs, their size and appearance may be the first things to come to mind. There are many other factors involved in choosing the breed of dog that is right for you. ...read more

Product Description: The International Association for the Integrational Study of Language and Communication was founded in 1998. Integrationist Notes and Papers began in 2003 as an occasional series of leaflets circulated to IAISLC members. Its purpose is to give a brief position statement or comment, from an integrationist perspective, on a variety of controversial issues...read more

The basic claim of this book is that for 2000 years and more the western tradition has relied on two very dubious assumptions about human communication: that each national language is a unique code and that linguistic communication consists in the utilization of such codes to transfer messages from mind to mind.

Product Description: This book re-examines the old debate about the relationship between rationality and literacy. Does writing "restructure consciousness?" Do preliterate societies have a different "mind-set" from literate societies? Is reason "built in" to the way we think? How is literacy related to numeracy? Is the "logical form" that Western philosophers recognize anything more than an extrapolation from the structure of the written sentence? Is logic, as developed formally in Western education, intrinsically beyond the reach of the preliterate mind? What light, if any, do the findings of contemporary neuroscience throw on such issues? Roy Harris challenges the received mainstream opinion that reason is an intrinsic property of the human mind, and argues that the whole Western conception of rational thought, from Classical Greece down to modern symbolic logic, is a by-product of the way literacy developed in European cultures...read more

Product Description: Language is commonly taken to be one of the unmistakable manifestations of human intelligence. Anyone who can read and understand this sentence is assumed to be not only literate (since it is an English sentence) but also rational (i...read more

Product Description: In Signs, Language and Communication readers familiar with the arguments of Professor Harris' previous work, including Signs of Writing, will find those ideas developed here to cover not just writing, but aspects of art, design and manufacture...read more

Product Description: Integrating Reality discusses the ontological assumptions behind integrational linguistics. They start from the assumption that 'What is reality?' is a question that only human beings are capable of asking. Being able to ask it already presupposes a mastery of language, and in turn tacitly assumes recognition of selfhood in the questioner...read more

Product Description: In this lucid and insightful essay, renowned linguist Roy Harris reflects on the early nineteenth-century doctrine of “art for art’s sake.” This was attacked by Proudhon and Nietzsche, but defended by Théophile Gautier and E...read more

Product Description: The traditional Western view of writing, from Aristotle down to the present day, has treated the written word as a visual substitute for the spoken word. The eminent Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) was the first to provide this traditional assumption with a reasoned basis by incorporating it into a more general theory of signs...read more

Product Description: Are contemporary art theorists and critics speaking a language that has lost its meaning? Is it still based on concepts and values that are long out of date? Does anyone know what the function of the arts is in modern society?Roy Harris breaks new ground with his linguistic approach to the key issues...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Saussure and his Interpreters is the first major reassessment of the reception of Saussure's ideas throughout the twentieth century. That Saussure's work profoundly influenced developments in such diverse fields as linguistics, anthropology, psychology and literary studies is denied by no one. But what exactly Saussure's views were taken to be by his interpreters has not hitherto been subject to any comprehensive critical survey. How well were Saussure's ideas understood by those who took them up? Or how badly misunderstood? And why? The answers to these questions address central issues in the history of Western culture. Each chapter focuses on one particular interpreter of Saussure's work, but many others are mentioned in context for purposes of comparison, and attention is drawn to connections and disparities between their interpretations. Those whose interpretations are examined in detail include Bloomfield, Hjelmslev, Jakobson, Lévi-Strauss, Chomsky, Barthes and Derrida. (view table of contents)

Product Description: This text is part of the "Bristol Introductions" series which aims to present perspectives on philosophical themes, using non-technical language, for both the new and the advanced scholar. This work argues that over the centuries both philosophers and linguists have underestimated the extent to which their linguistic discussions have been locked into a metalanguage which they have vested interest in protecting and perpetuating...read more

First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.