Publisher's Synopsis
In this wide-ranging book, Talbot Taylor challenges "pure linguistics" through the idea of communicational scepticism. He argues that making ourselves understood, in speech or writing is actually very difficult, and that communication problems are an intrinsic part of language production - a problem rarely tackled by linguists or language theorists. The rhetorical consequences of communicational scepticism are traced in the development of Western theories of language and interpretation from Locke, Saussure, Frege, Chomsky and Derrida to Dummet, Kripke, Grice, Fish, Smith and Garfinkel. Arguing for an increased awareness of whether, rather than what or how we understand, this book offers insights into the foundations of human communication.
