Pursuing Meaning - Borg, Emma

. .

Résumé :
Emma Borg examines the relation between semantics and pragmatics, and assesses recent answers to fundamental questions of how and where to draw the divide between the two. She argues for a minimal account of the interrelation between them--a 'minimal semantics'--which holds that only rule-governed appeals to context can influence semantic content.

Biographie:
Emma Borg joined the Philosophy Department at the University of Reading in 1998, shortly before she completed her PhD at University College London. She has been with the Department ever since and is currently Head of Department. She has held visiting positions at Rutgers University and the University of Chicago, and was a recipient of a Philip Leverhulme Prize (for 'outstanding young researchers'). She is on the editorial boards for the journals Ratio, Theoria, and the International Review of Pragmatics, and has published widely on issues within the philosophy of language, including the monograph Minimal Semantics.

Sommaire:
.

Borg presents her readers with a thoroughly scholarly text. She cites just about everybody who plays her kind of game. In these citings, she gives fair and comprehensive representations of what others say about these matters and does so, generally, in a clear writing style. Nick Fotion, Analysis Borg brings order and focus to the debate, responding to a deluge of objections from multiple perspectives ... Borg writes in an exceptionally clear and often witty style. Pursuing Meaning is lively, full of interesting turns of phrase, and detailed in content ... Borg addresses questions about the usefulness and underlying plausibility of minimalism head-on, offering positive reasons for being a minimalist ... Pursuing Meaning has a proactive rather than reactive tone, which helps draw along readers who are initially disinclined to support her position. Given the depth of disagreement over the semantics/pragmatics divide, that, in itself, is a major achievement. Allyson Mount, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews