Philosophy of Language: Meaning and Reference

About this programme

The course presents the basics of contemporary analytical philosophy of language. The course introduces the student to the basic distinction between intension and extension, Frege's related distinction between meaning and reference, the distinction between analytically and synthetically true sentences, the idea that truth conditions form part of a sentence's meaning, and the principle of compositionality. Note! The content of this course overlaps to a very large extent with the content of the course Philosophy of Language I (7.5 credits), which was last offered in Spring 2026. If you have already received a grade for Philosophy of Language I, you are advised not to apply for this course, as you cannot count both towards a degree. Registration Before the start of the course, an email is sent out to all admitted students, with information and instructions. Admitted students are expected to register themselves (web registration). More about the course content: Against the background of Frege's and Russell's classical theories about the semantic properties of different types of linguistic expressions, Kripke's theory of names and rigid designators is introduced. We address problems surrounding the semantics of modal statements, with possible world semantics as an important tool for clarifying these and other semantic difficulties, such as Kaplan's theory of context dependence, Grice's theory of implicatures and Searle's speech act theory. Finally, more general philosophical theories of language – notably Grice’s, Lewis’ and Davidson’s – are discussed, which in one way or ano