On Linguistic Semantics and Linguistic Subdisciplines: A Review Article

Description

// Language in Society, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Oct., 1973), pp. 269-289.A review of: Charles j. Fillmore and D. Terrence Langendoen, eds, Studies in linguistic semantics. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, I97i. Pp. Viii+ 299. and Richard J. O'Brien, S.J., ed., Linguistics: Developments of the Sixties - Viewpoints for the Seventies. (Report of the twenty-second annual round table meeting on linguistics and language studies). Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1971. Pp. xiii+F36.In this review article I take up the concern with the future directions of linguistics and its subdisciplines as point of departure., My concern is to show that a number of important themes are common to abstract linguistics, on the one hand, and the fields of sociolinguistics, the ethnography of speaking, and social interaction, on the other, and to argue that increased communication among researchers in all these fields is crucial if the goals that each projects for the future are to be achieved. I will discuss particularly the analysis of discourse; the problem of presuppositions; the question of grammaticality, acceptability, and the speech community; and semantics. Finally, I will discuss briefly the issues raised in O'Brien concerning the various subdisciplines of linguistics.