Linguistics and Ancient Languages
Bohloul Alaei
Abstract
This article is a critical analysis of William G. Lycan's Philosophy of Language: a Contemporary Introduction (2nd ed.) that is translated to Persian by Meysam Mohammadamini. "Language Philosophy" is one of the courses in the field of Linguistics which is offered by the Ministry of Education to be taught. ...
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This article is a critical analysis of William G. Lycan's Philosophy of Language: a Contemporary Introduction (2nd ed.) that is translated to Persian by Meysam Mohammadamini. "Language Philosophy" is one of the courses in the field of Linguistics which is offered by the Ministry of Education to be taught. The author tries to rely on the first-hand sources and report the disputes of the language philosophers on the nature of the meaning and the related theories without bias. He tries to avoid falling into the complexities of philosophy and discuss the issues with a rational order. Since Persian texts are rare and mostly out of date, this translation becomes of particular importance. Moreover, language philosophers are not supposed to be the only readers of the book. Scholars of linguistics, also deal with the issues of language philosophy in recent years. The book has a rich and well-engineered content. This article gives a brief introduction of the book, provides a preview of the philosophy of language. Then, the structure of the book is introduced regarding all its components. The evaluation and analysis of the book in terms of both form and content constitutes the center of the discussion, during which the weaknesses and strengths of the translation are emphasized, especially in terms of comprehensibility and readability of the text, the choice of technical terminology and proper rendering of the author's concepts.
