Models of Language: Towards a practice-based account of information in natural language

he present work is concerned with two models of linguistic information. It doesnot deal with a development of the formal (or technical) characteristics of thesemodels, but rather it inquires into their philosophical presuppositions. One suchmodel is the one provided by the discipline known as formal semantics; the otherone is based on a particular account of the use of symbols in our everyday life.The purpose of the present work is to argue for the thesis that the latter, and notthe former, provides us with promising tools to represent the information carriedby language.A study of this kind of information is important in its own right, but myinterest in it stems from its connection with other concepts, namely, linguisticunderstanding, linguistic communication, and, above all, our ‘human world’ inwhich language is paramount. That is, my interest in this subject lies in theconviction that language and the information it carries are interdependent withour individual abilities to speak and comprehend language, as well as with the‘human world’ that we live in—the nature of which is both physical and social.This is an inquiry into an aspect of what human beings are; it deals with oneway in which our individual abilities allow us to create ‘objects’ and participatein exchanges with other people, and the way these ‘objects’ and these exchangesin turn in?uence our individual abilities and make us into what we are.