Devitt and Sterelny's "Language and Reality" (along with A. P. Martinich's "Philosophy of Language," 4th ed.) was the required text for a graduate philosophy of language class I recently took. I found the book both challenging and enlightening.By reading the Table of Contents in Amazon.com's nifty "Look Inside" feature, you can see pretty much everything that is covered in the book. Therefore, I shall just describe a couple of things that might be difficult to detect without having the book in your hands.
First, a word about writing style: Still active in their careers, Devitt and Sterelny (hereafter 'D&S') make no attempt to hide their positions on the issues they address in this book. In my experience, two felicitous things came from this. Regarding the text, on the one hand, such an approach gave a liveliness and immediacy to the prose. In the classroom, on the other hand, D&S's lack of neutrality provided my professor, who does not agree with them on all points, an excellent backdrop against which he detailed competing arguments.
Second, each chapter ends with a concise list of recommended readings. In light of the above point, if you're reading this book without a professor describing counterarguments to D&S's positions, then these recommended readings might prove quite helpful.
Third, the arguments and theories in this book are themselves very well laid out and with considerable detail, especially for an introduction. Moreover, the progession from one argument or theory to the next is quite smooth.
Finally, I should say that if you're very new to analytical philosophy, then this book, because of the amount of detail, might be a bit rough going, in which case I would highly recommend William Lycan's "Philosophy of Language."
Bottom Line: If you want a solid introduction to the philosophy of language and you feel comfortable with moderately dense analytical argumentation, then this book is for you.
