Semantics Is The Science Of Meaning In Language

Semantics

Cognitive Semantics and Scientific Knowledge

The book focuses on the question of how and to what extent cognitive semantic approaches can contribute to the new field of the cognitive science of science. The argumentation is based on a series of instructive case studies which are intended to test the prospects and limits of the metascientific application of both holistic and modular cognitive semantics. The case studies show that, while cognitive semantic research is able to solve problems which have traditionally been the domain of the philosophy of science, it also encounters serious limits. The prospects and the limits thus revealed suggest new research topics which in future can be tackled by cognitive semantic approaches to the cognitive science of science.

Structures of Language: Notes Towards a Systematic Investigation

This annotated commentary delineating Michel Pêcheux’s materialist discourse theory anticipates the formation of a real social science to supersede the metaphysical meanings ‘always-already-there’ instituted by empirical ideology. Structures of Language presents Pêcheux’s consequential work in respect of Ferdinand de Saussure’s epistemological breakthrough that founded the science of linguistics: the theoretical separation of sound from meaning. Noam Chomsky’s generative grammar, John Searle’s philosophy of language, B. F. Skinner’s indwelling agents, J. L. Austin’s speech situations, Jacques Lacan’s symbolic order, and other influential linguistic researchers, are cited to explain imaginary semantic systems. The broader implications for structural metaphysics in language use are tacitly conveyed.