B8647 - FILOSOFIA DEL LINGUAGGIO (1) (LM)

Learning outcomes

The course offers a critical overview of major currents and issues in the philosophy of language, with particular attention to the relationship between language, thought, and meaning-making practices. At the end of the course students will have acquired the analytical tools to investigate the role of language in the reconfiguration of experience, the structuring of knowledge, and the formation of concepts, as well as to explore the limits and efficacy of speech acts in contexts where epistemic, ethical, and institutional values are negotiated.

Course contents

The course offers a critical overview of several major strands in contemporary philosophy of language, taking pragmatics as a privileged perspective from which to investigate the relationship between language, thought, and signifying practices. The first part will focus on the shift from a representational conception of language to one grounded in use, language-games, the grammars of practices, and forms of life. It will therefore address the relationships between meaning and context, linguistic rules and social norms, concept formation and the articulation of experience.

The second part will be devoted to speech act theory. Starting from Austin and Searle, it will examine the distinctions between locution, illocution, and perlocution, felicity conditions, the main types of illocutionary force, and the role of conventions, intentionality, recognition, and authority.

The third part will examine the relationship between meaning, inference, and cooperation. Through Grice, the course will discuss speaker meaning, conversational maxims, implicatures, and the limits of a purely informational and rationalistic conception of communicative exchange.

The fourth part will explore the transition from speech acts to interaction. It will analyse the dialogical and sequential character of exchanges, the interlocutor’s response, the perlocutionary dimension, and the negotiation of effects. Drawing on Goffman, Habermas, and selected praxematic and praxeological approaches, language will be studied as a practice through which actions are coordinated, responsibilities are assigned, and epistemic, ethical, and institutional claims are negotiated.

A concluding thematic section will be devoted to the relationship between observance and transgression. It will distinguish between the constitutive rules of language-games, the norms governing their appropriateness, and the social and institutional prescriptions formulated through language. The analysis will address different forms of non-conformity, ranging from error and conversational violation to refusal, dissent, and declared disobedience, with particular attention to the relationship between voice, conformism, and democratic conversation.

Readings/Bibliography

Bibliography

Required core text

Filippo Domaneschi, Introduzione alla pragmatica, Roma, Carocci, 2014.

The purpose of studying this textbook is to provide or consolidate the basic knowledge required to follow the course. A number of short foundational texts discussed in the textbook and revisited during the lectures will also be made available on Virtuale.

Texts to choose from

Students are required to choose two texts: one from Group A and one from Group B. The ability to relate the two selected volumes critically to the problems and authors addressed during the course will form an integral part of the assessment.

Group A — Speech acts, implicit communication, and interaction

Jürgen Habermas, On the Pragmatics of Communication, edited by Maeve Cooke, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1998 (four chapters of the student’s choice, excluding essay 8 and essay 10; the available partial Italian translations will also be indicated during the course).

Erving Goffman, Le condizioni di felicità, edited by Angelo Romeo, Milano-Udine, Mimesis, 2015 (students are nevertheless advised to read the English original, “Felicity’s Condition,” American Journal of Sociology, 89(1), 1–53, which is readily available online).

Marina Sbisà, Detto non detto. Le forme della comunicazione implicita, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2007.

Marina Sbisà, Linguaggio, ragione, interazione. Per una teoria pragmatica degli atti linguistici, Bologna, il Mulino, 1989; digital edition, Trieste, EUT – Edizioni Università di Trieste, 2009.

This group brings together different perspectives on the relationship between meaning, linguistic action, implicit communication, recognition, and the organization of interaction.

Group B — Following, violating, and transforming rules

Roberto Dionigi, La fatica di descrivere. Itinerario di Wittgenstein nel linguaggio della filosofia, Macerata, Quodlibet, 2001.

Sandra Laugier, Vulnerabilità e forme di vita. Wittgenstein e la politica dell’ordinario, Roma, Castelvecchi, 2025.

Albert Ogien, Sandra Laugier, Perché disobbedire in democrazia?, trans. by Dario Ferrari, Pisa, ETS, 2014.

Claudia Bianchi, Laura Caponetto, Filosofia sociale del linguaggio, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2025.

This group of texts is devoted to the relationship between forms of life and rules, vulnerability and emancipation, conformism and contestation, whether directed at language itself or enacted through linguistic mediation.

Teaching methods

In addition to lectures, selected texts will be read and discussed in class.

Students with disabilities and specific learning disorders

Students with disabilities or specific learning disorders are entitled to appropriate accommodations based on their individual needs, subject to assessment by the University Service for Students with Disabilities and Specific Learning Disorders. Students are asked not to contact the course instructor directly, but to arrange an appointment with the Service, which will determine the appropriate accommodations. Further information is available at:

https://site.unibo.it/studenti-con-disabilita-e-dsa/it/per-studenti

Assessment methods

The examination takes the form of an oral examination based on the texts selected from the course reading list.

Assessment will take into account the student’s command of the relevant subject matter (40%), the ability to discuss it critically and place it within a broader theoretical perspective (40%), and the quality of the oral presentation, with particular attention to terminological accuracy and argumentative clarity (20%).

During the 2026/2027 academic year, at least six examination sessions will be scheduled for all students, in the following months:

January, March, May, June, September and December.

Teaching tools

A range of multimedia resources will be used during the course. All course materials will be made available on the Virtuale e-learning platform. Students intending to take the examination are therefore required to enrol on the platform in order to access the teaching materials, which will form an integral part of the examination syllabus.

Office hours

See the website of Pierluigi Basso