This paper considers the implications for philosophy of some recent approaches to pragmatics (with a focus on relevance theory) and makes two main points. First, the widening gap between sentence meaning and speaker’s meaning increasingly brings into question a basic assumption of much philosophy of language: that linguistic semantics provides direct insight into the structure of human thoughts...

Once again, van Fraassen has given us an incredibly rich, learned and profound book that will be studied and argued about for decades to come. The book is about scientific representation, but from the perspective of Bas van Fraassen’s empiricism this means ‘‘representation of the empirical phenomena’’ (1). He is keen to distance himself from the empiricist tradition that would interpret the lat...

To what extent is semiotics an appropriate model for understanding material culture meaning? The answer to this question, of course, depends upon the kinds of semiotics that one is talking about. In our article we argue that Saussurean and post-Saussurean approaches favored by some Postprocessualists are incomplete and advocate an alternative approach inspired by the ‘other father’ of semiotics...

Digital technology, the Internet and mobile communication have made picture taking and sharing ubiquitous. The photograph with its long track record as a representational artefact now portrays individuals in ever broader contexts. The once distinctive practice of the snapshot aesthetic in capturing the banal and everyday has become culturally pervasive and children are key creators, producers a...

Approximately 50% of publications in English peer reviewed journals are contributed by non-native speakers (NNS) of the language. Basic thought processes are considered to be universal yet there are differences in thought patterns and particularly in discourse management of writers with different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The study highlights some areas of potential incompatibility i...