Abstract
Which is conceptually primary, the idiolect or the language? If the former, the apparent absence of a social norm makes it hard to account for success in communication; if the latter, the danger is that the norm has no clear relation to practice. Michael Dummett thinks that by promoting the primacy of the idiolect I run afoul of Wittgenstein’s ban on private languages; in my view Dummett, by making language primary, has misplaced the essential social element in linguistic behavior. In this paper I want to try to sort out and clarify the issues involved.
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© 1994 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Davidson, D. (1994). The Social Aspect of Language. In: McGuinness, B., Oliveri, G. (eds) The Philosophy of Michael Dummett. Synthese Library, vol 239. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8336-7_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8336-7_1
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-4389-4
Online ISBN: 978-94-015-8336-7
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