Showing papers in "Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement in 1976"

The Translation Theory of Understanding

Abstract: The theme of this paper is a philosophical theory of communication; more specifically, a theory about the understanding of language. It is an old theory, whose classical exponent was John Locke, and in the form that Locke expounded it the theory is now generally rejected by philosophers. But it is far from being a mere museum piece. The view about language that Locke put forward was a plausible one, and it has continued to be put forward in various forms. My main concern here is with a very recent version of the theory, contained in a book published early in 1975; however, it will be helpful to begin with a brief account of Locke's version. This is not only classical, but is also simple and clear, and as such it may serve as a useful stepping-stone towards an understanding of the more modern version.

Non-verbal Communication and Language

Abstract: Human communication consists of an intricate combination of verbal and non-verbal signals. We shall see that the verbal aspects of messages are elaborated and supported in a number of ways by non-verbal ones. In order to understand human verbal communication we need to know about these non-verbal components. Non-verbal communication (NVC) can be studied experimentally as a problem in encoding and decoding; it can also be studied as part of a sequence, using the methods of ethology or of linguistics. We shall see that this kind of analysis has theoretical implications about the nature of human communication, and has practical implications in a number of fields.