The True and the False The Domain of the Pragmatic |
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| Author:
| Travis, Charles |
| Series title: | Pragmatics and Beyond Ser. |
| ISBN: | 978-90-272-8083-1 |
| Publication Date: | Jan 1981 |
| Publisher: | John Benjamins Publishing Company
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| Book Format: | Digital (delivered electronically) |
| List Price: | USD $102.00 |
Book Description:
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Pragmatics often begins by supposing that specifying and describing truth bearers is a proper task for semantics. The main thrust of the present work is to show why truth and truth bearers lie essentially beyond the descriptive reach of semantics, and to outline a theory of truth bearers as a proper and fundamental task for pragmatics. It is also common for treatments, or definitions of truth to be confused with substantive theories about truth bearers, with a variety of unfortunate...
More DescriptionPragmatics often begins by supposing that specifying and describing truth bearers is a proper task for semantics. The main thrust of the present work is to show why truth and truth bearers lie essentially beyond the descriptive reach of semantics, and to outline a theory of truth bearers as a proper and fundamental task for pragmatics. It is also common for treatments, or definitions of truth to be confused with substantive theories about truth bearers, with a variety of unfortunate results. This monograph suggests a way of separating these tasks, and shows how many problems are thus avoided. Some emphasis is placed on the generally universal -- i.e., nonlanguage-specific -- character of pragmatic topics, and of truth. These issues occasion a discussion of semantic paradoxes, and of several relativities in the notion of truth.