Language

What's the difference between philosophy of language and semiotics?

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Here is how I understand the difference between semiotics and philosophy of language. The former is a *doctrine* about the nature of meaning, roughly to the effect that the most important types of communication depend upon one or another form of code. This doctrine is applied (controversially, many would say) not just to natural language, but also to gestures, facial expressions, and even such things as how people dress or how cities are laid out. By contrast, the philosophy of language is an inquiry into the nature of such phenomena as meaning, truth, implication, and communication. It tries not to presuppose any answers to these question, but rather tries simply to find the best answer or answers available. In this way, while both semiotics and philosophy of language tend to study the same phenomena, the former comes to the project with certain preconceptions about how they are to be understood while the latter does not.

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