William G. Lycan is William Rand Kenan, Jr. Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and currently Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Connecticut, Storrs. His eight books include Consciousness and Experience (1996), Real Conditionals (2001), and Philosophy of Language: A Contemporary Introduction (Third Edition, 2018).

Now in its Third Edition, Philosophy of Language: A Contemporary Introduction introduces students to the main issues and theories in twentieth-century philosophy of language, focusing specifically on linguistic phenomena.

1. Introduction: Meaning and Reference Part 1: Reference and Referring 2. Definite Descriptions 3. Proper Names: The Description Theory 4. Proper Names: Direct Reference and the Causal-Historical Theory Part II: Theories of Meaning 5. Traditional Theories of Meaning 6. "Use" Theories 7. Psychological Theories: Grice's Program 8. Verificationism 9. Truth-Condition Theories: Davidson's Program 10. Truth-Condition Theories: Possible Worlds and Intensional Semantics Part III: Pragmatics and Speech Acts 11. Semantic Pragmatics 12. Speech Acts and Illocutionary Force 13. Implicative Relations Part IV: The Expressive and the Figurative 14. Expressive Language 15. Metaphor Glossary Bibliography Index