This book examines the disclosive function of language—what language does in revealing or disclosing the world. It takes a phenomenological approach to this question, defined by the need to accord with the various experiences speakers can have of language. Based on this commitment, it develops a phenomenological conception of language with important implications for both the philosophy of language and recent work in the embodied-embedded-enactive-extended (4e) tradition of cognitive science. The book draws extensively on the work of Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Ludwig Wittgenst ... More

This book examines the disclosive function of language—what language does in revealing or disclosing the world. It takes a phenomenological approach to this question, defined by the need to accord with the various experiences speakers can have of language. Based on this commitment, it develops a phenomenological conception of language with important implications for both the philosophy of language and recent work in the embodied-embedded-enactive-extended (4e) tradition of cognitive science. The book draws extensively on the work of Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, showing how their respective conceptions of language can be combined to complement each other within a unified view. From the early Heidegger, it extracts a basic framework for a phenomenology of language, comprising both a general overall picture of the role of language and a more specific model of the disclosive function of words. Merleau-Ponty’s views are used to explicate the generic “pointing out”—or presentational—function of linguistic signs in more detail, while the late Wittgenstein is interpreted as providing versatile means to describe their many pragmatic uses. Having developed this unified phenomenological view, the book then explores its broader significance, arguing that it goes beyond the conventional realism/idealism opposition, that it challenges standard assumptions in mainstream post-Fregean philosophy of language, and that it makes a significant contribution not only to the philosophical understanding of language but also to 4e cognitive science.