Dilemmas of Discourse: Controversies about the Sociological Interpretation of Language

First Published in 1975, Dilemmas of Discourse brings together strands of arguments from disciplines like sociology, anthropology, linguistics and philosophy to explore the debate around the issue of deciding the meaning of what people may say. Can the meaning of words be described satisfactorily as a bundle of semantic features? Can speech acts such as promising and insulting be described as only occurring when a particular form of speech is used in a particular kind of context? Do socioli...