Language and Phenomenology

Chad Engelland is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of Dallas. He is the author of several books, including Ostension: Word Learning and the Embodied Mind (2014), Heidegger’s Shadow: Kant, Husserl, and the Transcendental Turn (Routledge, 2017), and Phenomenology (2020).

"Language and Phenomenology is a remarkable, and long overdue, consideration of the ways in which phenomenology reveals the depth and richness of our extraordinarily various experiences with language. In clearly written essays, a distinguished group of authors—drawing on resources from eidetic, transcendental, existential, and hermeneutic phenomenology and engaging directly with analytic approaches—demonstrate how careful attention to experience can both overturn traditional assumptions about linguistic meaning and point the way to a deeper philosophical understanding of what language is. An indispensable contribution to the literature." ―Steven Crowell, Rice University, USA, author of Normativity and Phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger"Husserl addressed the issue of language at the very start of his Logical Investigations. It was the tip of the spear in his breakthrough into phenomenology. The essays in this book show how the phenomenology of language, in its many dimensions, was further developed in Husserl’s later work and by writers like Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur, and Gadamer. The book shows how the phenomenology of language can be compared with the work of Wittgenstein and Kripke, Carnap and Quine, and Derrida, and how it can shed light on ostension, joint intentionality, and poetry. The final essay in the book, appropriately enough, discusses not just another issue in human language, but the language of phenomenology itself, and shows how, by an ‘inflection’ of syntax, it differentiates itself from natural speech. Language is the pivot on which phenomenology spins." —Robert Sokolowski, The Catholic University of America, USA, author of The Phenomenology of the Human Person"This volume is essential reading for anyone interested in the phenomenology of language." —Mark Wrathall, Oxford, UK, author of Heidegger and Unconcealment: Truth, Language, and History"It succeeds in offering a rich contribution to ‘phenomenology of language’ as its own domain, tracing some central threads about the fundamental presuppositions such a domain has to grapple with, whilst also making space for detailed reflection on the lived experience of our linguistic lives . . . For those already engaged in phenomenological ideas, the writing is largely very accessible and illuminating."—Sarah Pawlett Jackson in Phenomenological Reviews

• PART ILanguage and Experience 191 Language and Experience: Phenomenological Dimensions 21DANIEL O. DAHLSTROM2 Merleau-Ponty on Expression and Meaning 43TAYLOR CARMAN3 On Husserl’s Concept of the Pre-predicative: Genealogy of Logic and Regressive Method 56DOMINIQUE PRADELLE4 Husserlian Phenomenology, Rule-Following, and Primitive Normativity 74JACOB RUMP5 The Place of Language in the Early Heidegger’s Development of Hermeneutic Phenomenology 92SCOTT CAMPBELL6 Logos, Perception, and the Ontological Function of Discourse in Phenomenology: A Theme from Heidegger’s Reading of Aristotle 115LESLIE MACAVOY7 We Are a Conversation: Heidegger on How Language Uncovers 132KATHERINE WITHY8 The Phenomenology of Poetry 149JENNIFER ANNA GOSETTI-FERENCEIPART IILanguage and Joint Experience 1759 Complex Community: Toward a Phenomenology of Language Sharing 177ANDREW INKPIN10 The Scaffolding Role of a Natural Language in the Formation of Thought: Edmund Husserl’s Contribution 194POL VANDEVELDE11 Widening the World through Speech: Husserl on the Phenomenon of Linguistic Appropriation 212MICHELE AVERCHI12 The Priority of Language in World-Disclosure: Back to the Beginnings in Childhood 229LAWRENCE J. HATAB13 Play in Conversation: The Cognitive Import of Gadamer’s Theory of Play 248CAROLYN CULBERTSON14 Translating Hospitality: A Narrative Task 264RICHARD KEARNEY15 Inflecting “Presence” and “Absence”: On Sharing the Phenomenological Conversation 273CHAD ENGELLAND