Foucault's Philosophy of Language

Michel Foucault was not a philosopher of language, and yet one cannot come to grips with the specificity of his ideas on knowledge, power, and ethics without appreciating the view of discourse as a social practice that runs through most of his philosophy. To identify what is distinctive about Foucault’s approach to discursive practices, I will focus on four topics, namely (1) pragmatism, (2) the constitution of meaning, (3) the relationship between meaning and truth, and (4) relations between language and power. This series of topics will help to situate Foucault’s views in relation to some central debates in the philosophy of language. At the same time, it will highlight the specificity of the concerns and aims that motivate Foucault’s studies of discourse as a social practice. My aim in this chapter is to provide an overview that facilitates both further exegesis into the various aspects of language in Foucault’s philosophy and new systematic work that further develops his approach.