Review of Philosophy of Language: a contemporary introduction

This review critiques William G. Lycan's Philosophy of Language: a contemporary introduction (2nd ed.) which is translated to Persian by Meysam Mohammadamini. Since "Language Philosophy" is one of the courses offered in Linguistics and Persian texts in the field are rare and mostly out of date, this translation becomes of particular importance. Moreover, language philosophers are not supposed to be the only readers of the book. Scholars of linguistics, also deal with the issues of language philosophy in recent years. The book has a rich and well-engineered content. The author tries to rely on the first-hand sources and report the disputes of the language philosophers on the nature of meaning and the related theories without bias. He tries to avoid falling into the complexities of philosophy and discuss the issues with a rational order. This article gives a brief introduction of the book, provides a preview of the philosophy of language. Then, the structure of the book is introduced regarding all its components. The evaluation and analysis of the book in terms of both form and content constitutes the center of the discussion, during which the weaknesses and strengths of the translation are dealt with, especially in terms of comprehensibility and readability of the text, the choice of technical terminology and proper rendering of the author's concepts.