Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
FILOZOFIA, cilt.79, sa.4, ss.426-441, 2024 (AHCI)
The philosophy of language is a field that covers all kinds of philo-
sophical reflections on language since Antiquity. In addition to the
philosophy of language, there is a much newer branch of philosophy
called “philosophy of linguistics.” Just like the philosophy of history,
philosophy of biology, etc., the philosophy of linguistics focuses on the
structure of linguistics by taking a specific science as its subject. It
presents meta-theoretical information by trying to explain the
underlying foundations of linguistic theories. In the first part of this
article, we review the noteworthy theoretical attempts to ground the
philosophy of linguistics. In the second part of the article, we briefly
describe Ricoeur’s and Itkonen’s attempts at the philosophy of
linguistics in response to the question of “how does the philosophy of
linguistics work in practice?” Thus, we have tried to provide two
concrete examples for the philosophy of linguistics: the first one
concerning the 20th century, and the second, the 21th century. We found
that both of them – albeit for different reasons – showed a consensus
in putting Saussure, the founding father of linguistics, in the firing line.
Whether the emergence of the philosophy of linguistics damaged the
legitimacy of the traditional philosophy of language is discussed in the
concluding section of our article.