Language, truth and meaning

Imagine spending a day without language: without speaking, without reading, without hearing anyone else say anything, without even thinking to yourself in language. That would be a weird day! Language is a key part of almost everything we do; our world would be completely different without it. But it can be mysterious just how language operates. How is it that just making some particular noises, or making some particular inscriptions, manages to communicate information, build or break relationships, shape distributions of power, and do so much else?

The key seems to be that those noises and inscriptions *mean* something. Some of the questions you will explore in this unit concern: what is linguistic meaning, anyway? What determines what a piece of language means? What does it take for a claim to be true? What is the relationship between the language of a community and the way each individual member of the community speaks? How is our use of language shaped by, and how does it shape, social power?