LINGUIST List 13.828

Tue Mar 26 2002

Books: Pragmatics: The Use of Language

Editor for this issue: Dina Kapetangianni <dinalinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Christine Sosa, The Use of Language, Prashant Parikh

CSLI Publications is pleased to announce the availability of:

THE USE OF LANGUAGE; Prashant Parikh;paper ISBN: 1-57586-354-5, 
$24.50, cloth ISBN: 1-57586-355-3, $65.00, 175 pages. CSLI 
Publications 2001. http://cslipublications.stanford.edu , email: 
pubscsli.stanford.edu.

To order this book, contact The University of Chicago Press. Call 
their toll free order number 1-800-621-2736 (U.S. & Canada only) or 
order online at http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ (use the search 
feature to locate the book, then order).

Book description:

The Use of Language provides the first game-theoretic account of 
communication, speaker meaning, and interpretation, and more general 
types of information flow. The analysis is then extended to 
conversational implicature and to a new explanation of the Gricean 
maxims and various important properties of implicature. The book also 
develops game-theoretic models of illocutionary force, 
miscommunication, and aspects of discourse. Lastly, it offers a new 
account of visual representation and visual implicature.


"Dr. Parikh has developed a very original way of considering 
communication as expressed in language or visually. He has argued 
that many apparently odd features of actual communication can be 
explained in rational terms, as minimizing communication length. The 
richness of his examples and results is accompanied by a high clarity 
of exposition."
- Kenneth J. Arrow
Nobel Memorial Laureate
Dept. of Economics, Stanford University

"Building on the writings of J. L. Austin and Paul Grice, Prashant 
Parikh develops an original and insightful systematic account of 
communication in a game theoretic framework. These are the right 
tools for the articulation and application of Gricean ideas about 
speaker meaning and conversational implicature, with their emphasis 
on speech as rational action and on the reflective interaction of 
speaker and audience, and this book brings out in rich detail how 
fruitful the framework can be."
- Robert Stalnaker
Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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