Well, the joke among my fellow philosophy students was that I'll have to set my alarm to wake up early tomorrow. What time am I getting up - 9AM (as opposed to my typical 11AM which is earlier than it was last semester). Why am I getting up early - because I'm flying to Springfield. Why am I flying to Springfield, because I have a red-headed friend who lives in IL. ...and I am going to leave things at that.
I'm still thinking about the pragmatics/semantics distinction and 'what is said.' For those of you who dont' know, the main debate between the meaning of an utterance is over 'what is said' i.e. what does the speaker actually mean. The semantics side argues that while context is relevant, 'what is said' is primarily determined by linguistic meaning of the utterance. Whereas the pramatics side will argue that meaning of a linguistic utterance is exhaustive, the use of the utterance determines 'what is said'. I think that so far I come down on the semantics side, to paraphrase one article that I read today, regardless of how I use 'the cow's tongue' it cannot mean 'silk purse'.
So now, the challenge comes as to how I can use this to relate to biblical hermeneutics and religious language. I still don't know specific applications of the pragmatics/semantics distinction, but I'll figure something out.
I'll update everyone on Monday how things are in IL... it's going to be warm while I visit so that's a good thing =)
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