A companion to the philosophy of language. Volume 1 / edited by Bob Hale, Crispin Wright and Alexander Miller.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

"Providing up-to-date, in-depth coverage of the central question, and written and edited by some of the foremost practitioners in the field, this timely new edition will no doubt be a go-to reference for anyone with a serious interest in the philosophy of language."

Kathrin Glüer-Pagin, Stockholm University

Now published in two volumes, the second edition of the best-selling Companion to the Philosophy of Language provides a complete survey of contemporary philosophy of language. The Companion has been greatly extended and now includes a monumental 17 new essays - with topics chosen by the editors, who curated suggestions from current contributors - and almost all of the 25 original chapters have been updated to take account of recent developments in the field.

In addition to providing a synoptic view of the key issues, figures, concepts, and debates, each essay introduces new and original contributions to ongoing debates, as well as addressing a number of new areas of interest, including two-dimensional semantics, modality and epistemic modals, and semantic relationism. The extended "state-of-the-art" chapter format allows the authors, all of whom are internationally eminent scholars in the field, to incorporate original research to a far greater degree than competitor volumes. Unrivaled in scope, this volume represents the best contemporary critical thinking relating to the philosophy of language.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

The 11th in the Blackwell "Companions in Philosophy" series (three more volumes are forthcoming), a series of reference works for students, with essays by leading philosophers, this volume features two dozen philosophers from the UK and the US who contribute to an overview of current work in philosophy of language. The approach is the mainstream Anglo-American tradition. The book is organized around three topics: (1) meaning, focusing on the work of Davidson, Dummett, and Grice; (2) language, truth, and reality, which deals with Kripke, Putnam, Quine, and Wittgenstein; and (3) reference, identity, and necessity, a set of Kripkean themes. Though aimed at a readership with considerable philosophical fluency, the essays do not presuppose specialized knowledge of the topics and writers in question. They should thus be accessible to sophisticated upper-level undergraduates. The bibliography is excellent; the index--at 31 pages--is superb; the 37-page glossary is cross-referenced. The editors confess that there are some missing topics--Wittgenstein's "criterion," semantic externalism, and supervenience. Even so, this book belongs in every library supporting an undergraduate philosophy major. Upper-division undergraduate; graduate; faculty. J. Churchill; Hendrix College