The Philosophical Language Analysis On Fiction

The nature of fiction has been a topic in philosophy, linguistics and literature. Considered as a concept opposite to the concepts of"reality"and"truth", fiction has been contempted by philosophy for long. In recent years, with the emergence of factionalism, and the sophisticate study on reference, sense, proposition, and truth value etc. in the research field of the philosophy of language and its combination with some study in linguistics, philosophy of logic, philosophy of science, and literature, fiction has become a frontier study topic in the philosophy of language. Actually almost all the important theories developed in Anglo-American philosophy of language have been relevant to fiction in the last ten years.This paper reviews the different views on fiction in the history of philosophy, and concerns on the importance of fiction in the contemporary study on ontology, epistemology and philosophy of logic. It defines fiction as the creative process, production and action that transcend the reality by imagination from our mind and thinking. And then it makes semantic and pragmatic analyses on the meaning of fictional names and fictional discourse.To define the reference of the fictional names is relevant to the definition of the ontological status of abstract object in philosophy. Extreme realism, mild realism and antirealism give three different kinds of definition on fictional object. The extreme realism considers that fictional objects exist as same as realistic objects and abstract objects. Mild realism defines fictional objects as a kind of abstract objects. And antirealism considers that fictional objects are nothing or none. This paper holds and proves that fictional objects are one kind of abstract objects produced by the"third world". The fictional objects do not exist in reality but exist in fictional world of fictions or people's mind. Name can refer not only to object in the real world but also to the concept in mind. Fictional names have reference when they are used to refer to fictional objects, but they fail to refer when they are used to refer to objects in the real world.Some conclusions are drawn on the reference and sense of the proper names and general names of fictional objects basing on the semantic and pragmatic analyses. Both the proper names and general names of fictional objects have their reference and sense. The reference establishes a relationship between word and referred fictional object. The sense is given by a set of descriptions on the fictional object. There exists a naming baptism on fictional names, including proper names and general names during the writing process of the author. The naming baptism is finished when the name appears the first time in the work as the author grants the name to the fictional object, and then during the"telling story"process, the author grants descriptions to the name. Fictional names existing in scientific theories belong to general names. They refer to some theoretical concepts that are impossible to be testified by experiments. The names not only refer to a set of things with the same nature, but also show some characteristics of the object. Their reference establishes a link between words and objects, and the sense is given by a set of descriptions too.The semantic and pragmatic analyses on the fictional discourse show that the preposition or the idea expressed is the sense of fictional sentences; the truth value becomes the reference of the sentences. The meaning of fictional discourse includes both the semantic meaning and the pragmatic meaning. This paper focuses on the speech act, intentionality and communication of fictional discourse and concludes that the meaning of fictional discourse is relevant to the above three uses. And the truth value of fictional discourse is relevant to the framework of its use. In formula framework of the fictional discourse use, the truth value is testified by the correspondence truth theory, and in the realistic framework of the fictional discourse use, the truth value is testified by the coherence truth theory.The analyses of the language of philosophy on fiction show that either the description theory (set description theory) of names or the historical causality theory (direct reference theory) of names is not sufficient to explain the reference and sense of fictional names. The description theory reveals the causal mechanism of the reference and sense of fictional names, but fails to show the historical and social causality factors. The historical causality theory reveals the chain of the historical causation of fictional names and the common social use of language, but denies the role of description in defining the meaning of names. Thus it suggests that we should make an integration of the two theories to explain the meaning of fictional names.The discussion on the role and effect of fiction to the realistic world summarizes that fiction can play both the positive or negative role on reality. We should take advantage of its positive role, and take precautions against and diminish the bad effect of its negative role.