Wittgenstein 101

Posted by jalfro on 2025-01-27

The work of Ludwig Wittgenstein will be very important to this blog. He demolished the philosophical theory that the sole function of language is to represent the world, pointing to the other vital uses that language has. Nevertheless, this disproven theory still has a powerful grip on much of our thinking, even (or perhaps especially) if we have never studied philosophy.

Wittgenstein suggested that it is more often appropriate to think of language as a tool that we use to do things in the world; its meaning is not determined by its reference to some external object or concept, but rather by its purpose. He pointed out that there are many different uses of language.

Some uses of Giving orders, and acting on them –

Describing an object by its appearance, or by its measurements –

Constructing an object from a description (a drawing) –

Reporting an event –

Speculating about the event –

Forming and testing a hypothesis –

Presenting the results of an experiment in tables and diagrams –

Making up a story; and reading one –

Acting in a play –

Singing rounds –

Guessing riddles –

Cracking a joke; telling one –

Solving a problem in applied arithmetic –

Translating from one language into another –

Requesting, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying.

Each of these activities can be represented as a language game, a rule governed model of the use of language in a particular context or situation. Several vital insights are gained through this approach:

  1. The social nature of language. A language exists when two or more individuals communicate.
  2. When people use language, they are performing an action. In order to understand them, we should ask what is they are doing, not merely what do they mean?
  3. The key role that context plays in determining meaning. A word or a sentence may change its meaning, if used in the context of a different language game.
  4. The correspondence of particular language games to particular ways of living. The game only makes sense in context the social activity which gives it meaning, and of which it is an integral part.
  5. Different instances of language use cannot be easily categorised: similarities between different uses are of a “family resemblance” type. Thus, if A shares characteristics with B, and B shares characteristics with C, it does not follow that C shares characteristics with A.

Wittgenstein applied his insight to solving the kinds of questions that interest philosophers (or, more properly, to showing how those questions arose from mistakes in language use). In Philosophical Investigations for instance he is very concerned with the question of whether we can know another persons mind? In this blog, I’ll be more concerned with the kinds of questions that interest sociologists, economists and political thinkers, as well as managers and organisers. The sociologist Harold Garfinkel came to similar conclusions for sociology, establishing the field of ethnomethodology, originally a study of research methods, though now having a broader application.

—
Determined Inquiry © 2025 by John Alfred Rooke is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Filed under Ethnomethodology Philosophy Political Economy Production Theory

Comments are closed.