ABSTRACT
Newton Garver has commented that the philosophical study of language in the twentieth century has been shaped by what he calls “two distinct flurries.” “The first movement,” he writes, “was naturally a reinforcement of the philosophy of language based on logic; but the subsequent movement has been an overthrow of that long tradition, the overthrow which Derrida speaks of as the closure of metaphysics.” 1 To understand the predominant philosophical conception of language in the twentieth century, then, is to understand language rhetorically. To conceive of language as such, moreover, is to behold an unprecedented revolution in the nature of Western philosophy, for “the philosophy of language,” Garver adds, “has almost invariably been based on logic rather than rhetoric.” 2
