Language as subject of philosophic reflection: specifics and trends

Abstract

Although «linguistic turn» and philosophy of language were recognized as research direction only at the beginning of XX century, the perception of language as social and cultural and historical phenomenon reflects the state of philosophy reflection which has lasted for more than two thousands years. For a long time human has speculated about essence, casual relations, functions and dependence of a language with many factors. As for the philosophy of language, at present the research efforts have focused on two directions - comment of a language as a tool of human communication and thinking as well as tools of a specific language for this or that period of its development. It is best to show the powers of the philosophy of language by listing its main problems: different aspects of understanding, sense, conceptual analysis etc. «Linguistic turn» is proper for a wide range of modern branches of philosophy – existentialism and hermeneutics, phenomenology and structuralism. Generally, from the beginning of the second half of XX century the main branches of philosophy are influenced at least by the stylistics of language, and the linguistic aspect of philosophic problem got impactive meaning for the philosophical dialectic. The current stage of the development of humanitarian sciences is characterized by the intention to unite all «linguistic» branches of philosophic research under the aegis of the philosophy of language. Like philosophy, literature and linguistic use the services of thinking and language, but if a language is at the top of the hierarchy of priorities and then - thinking, philosophy defines the priorities in another way: first of all, thinking which determines, conditions, defines specific historical social and cultural, mental and other specifics of language, its instrumental use