Actividad Nº 5: Indaguemos un poco acerca de la composición de

The intrinsic link between the use of language and practice referred to above is best understood by considering the notion of language-games. Although constantly relied on, and perhaps the most distinctive feature of his thinking from 1935 onwards, Wittgenstein’s characterizations of language-games are terse and somewhat vague. In the earliest of these, in the Blue Book (BIB) from 1933-4, language-games are introduced as ‘ways of using signs simpler than those in which we use the signs of our highly complicated everyday language’; they are ‘primitive’ or ‘simple forms of language’, from which ‘we can build up the complicated forms [...] by gradually adding new forms’ .223 In PU the term ‘language-game’ is introduced, in §7, against the background of an example of a ‘system of communication’, or ‘complete primitive language’, used to coordinate work on a building site (§§3, 2). Repeating a claim made in both the Blue and Brown Books, Wittgenstein goes on to suggest that it is through such simple ‘games’ that children first acquire language.224 The term ‘language-game’ is then introduced as applying to ‘those games by means of which children learn their mother tongue’, including simple rote-leaming drills, and ‘primitive languages’. Further explication comes in §23 with a sizeable list of examples of language-games such as giving orders, describing the appearance of objects, inventing stories, telling jokes, translation etc. Finally, in both these passages Wittgenstein highlights that language-games concern ‘the whole process of using words’, ‘the whole: of language and of the activities with which it is interwoven’ (§7). Indeed, the expression Tanguage-game' is intended to convey precisely that ‘the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life’ (§23).

It will be instructive to proceed by considering three apparent problems. First, it is strange that Wittgenstein links language-games with children’s acquisition of language. Not only does this look like an (uncharacteristically) empirical claim - for which Wittgenstein offers no evidence - but it is far from obviously true that the examples of §23 are in any way specific to children’s learning of language. Understandably perhaps, Baker and Hacker (1980, 52) claim that by the time of the

PU, Wittgenstein had rejected the idea of an ‘analytic-genetic’ connection between 223 BIB 17. - The term also occurs several times in PG, which is based on a revised 1933 typescript (TS 213; cf. footnote 245). Although this use might antedate the Blue Book, the term is simply used in these passages without being explained.

language-games and language acquisition. However, although §7 talks of this connection simply as something conceivable, thus freeing it of its empirical air, this claim is difficult to reconcile with both §7 and §5, both of which continue to imply the link. What does seem beyond question is that language acquisition involves acquiring the ability to participate in the various kinds of practice Wittgenstein enumerates in §23, examples that do not in any way reflect the specificity of (children’s) learning situations. It therefore seems that Baker and Hacker’s intuition is correct and that, however Wittgenstein presents it, the idea of language-games does not require any specific link with language-acquisition scenarios. The point Wittgenstein is making, somewhat misleadingly, in talking of language acquisition is thus best taken as describing the constitution of linguistic competence in terms of the ability to participate in the various kinds of language-game.

Second, Wittgenstein’s suggestion that language-games are ‘complete’ -

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albeit primitive - languages is often thought problematic. Surely, the objection goes, nothing that qualifies as (human) language could be so impoverished. So isn’t Wittgenstein simply wrong (e.g. §6) to suggest that a system of communication of the kind described in §2 could even conceivably be a ‘complete’ language? An indication of the weakness of this objection is that is so obvious: if it were a problem for his conception of language-games, one must wonder, how could Wittgenstein have failed to notice? Often the objection also has a question-begging air in relying on unstated or undefended assumptions about what language requires for completeness - simply

227

brushing aside Wittgenstein’s opposing thoughts on this issue. But the main reason, I suggest, Wittgenstein was unconcerned about the conceivability of real human communities living in such impoverished ways is its irrelevance to his intended use of language-games. On this Wittgenstein is quite explicit: ‘Our clear and simple language-games are [...] objects fo r comparison which, through similarity and 225 §5 recommends studying ‘the phenomena o f language in primitive kinds o f its use’, explaining that ‘the child uses such primitive forms o f language when learning to speak.’

226 E.g. Black 1996, 79, 81; Baker/Hacker 1980, 26 f.; Rhees 1970, 76, 81. Kenny 1973, 169 f. The same point is sometimes made with reference to the idea o f a primitive ‘form o f life’ (cf. Garver 1990, 181).

227 Cf. P U §18 and BIB 19. - An alternative strategy is Marie McGinn’s (1997, 50) claim that since there is ‘no essential structure or function against which the notion o f completeness can be defined’, ‘the idea o f completeness simply doesn’t apply’ to language-games. In that case, why does Wittgenstein so insistently talk o f ‘complete’ languages? A better answer is that he intends a different notion o f completeness to apply, characterized by the absence o f gaps. In this sense a small town, a child, and a language might all be complete, even though they will subsequently develop further. (On this kind o f gap-free order in transition cf. BIB 44.) Wittgenstein’s hope, expressed in the P U Preface, that his thoughts should form a natural sequence with no gaps also hints at this kind o f completeness.

dissimilarity, are to cast light on the conditions of our language’ .228 Simplified language-games are thus a methodological device, typological or schematic sketches of situations intended to focus attention on certain features of linguistic phenomena. Their ability to fulfil this function does not depend on the conceivability of human life comprising only a given language-game. Rather, as Wittgenstein puts it in the

Brown Book (81), to think of language-games as ‘complete systems of human

communication [...], it very often is useful to imagine such a simple language to be the entire system of communication of a tribe in a primitive state of society’. It is not necessary, but very often useful. To think of language-games as ‘complete’ languages is simply a heuristic expedient for treating them as distinctive linguistic subsystems.

Third, at first glance it might be doubted that Wittgenstein tells us anything informative about language-games. Having initially been somewhat casually applied to language-learning and primitive languages, Wittgenstein himself implies that ‘countless different kinds of use of everything we call “signs”, “words”, “sentences’” are underlain by just as many types of language-game {PU §23). Hence, beyond the obvious connotation of having something to do with using linguistic signs, the notion of a language-game looks open-ended, unbounded, or undefined. Before either embracing this as part of Wittgenstein’s theory-free approach, or complaining about the apparent indeterminacy of the language-game notion, it is clearly relevant to bear in mind Wittgenstein’s views about the nature of concepts and concept-acquisition. For instance, it should be remembered that Wittgenstein does not think that vagueness in a term’s application renders it useless. Moreover, the discussion of ‘games’ in terms of family resemblance is intended to apply precisely to language-games: it is these that paradigmatically have nothing essential, ‘not one thing at all in common on account o f which we use the same word for all’, and instead comprise a cluster of elements linked by case-to-case similarities {PU §65). Wittgenstein’s view of concept acquisition corresponds to this: concepts are to be explained or defined by giving examples, suggesting how these can be extended by analogy, and expecting this to allow the term to be used in certain ways {PU §§69, 71, 75, 208). Which is clearly what Wittgenstein does in explaining the notion of language-games: gives examples, hints at its analogical extension, and expects us just to get the hang of it.

228 P U § \3 0 , cf. §5 and BIB 17.

Nonetheless, if it is to mean anything at all, there is a need to be clear about the point of speaking of ‘language-games’. A direct answer, found in the Brown Book

(108), is that the function of a word ‘can easily be seen if we look at the role this word really plays in our usage of language, but it is obscured when instead of looking at the whole language-game, we only look at the contexts, the phrases of language in which the word is used’. In PU the same feature recurs in both Wittgenstein’s early use of language-games - in arguing that the uniformity (Gleichformigkeit) of words conceals the diversity of their functions and that sentences do not have a single underlying form - and their methodological role in eliminating misunderstandings (as Wittgenstein supposed) due to linguistic forms. At the very least, therefore, to talk of ‘language-games’ is Wittgenstein’s antidote to the philosophical inadequacy of considering language in a reductive formalist manner.

Against this background it seems reasonable to interpret the notion of a language-game as having two principal features. The first is to emphasize the embedding of language, qua the use of spoken or written signs, within the broader context of human activity. The point is not that linguistic acts are ‘speech acts’, acts that would (perhaps) be impossible without the use of language, or which take place ‘within’ language; nor does it allow them contingently to accompany ‘extra- linguistic’ actions, running in parallel like a film’s soundtrack. Rather, as Wittgenstein states, the point in talking of ‘language-games’ is that the use of signs is interwoven with, or part of, activity more generally. The term ‘praxeological’ is intended to express precisely this: that the logic inherent in patterns of language use is determined by the ‘logic’ of practices, or simply that the structure of language is intrinsically linked with that of practice, such that ‘everything that describes a language-game belongs to logic’. As long as this intrinsic link between sign use and practice is borne in mind, it seems to me that Wittgenstein’s earliest characterization of language-games - as ‘simple forms’ of language use, from which ‘we can build up the complicated forms [...] by gradually adding new forms’ (BIB

17) - is also the best. The intrinsic link with practice means that simple forms ‘of language’ are simultaneously simple forms of activity or practice, which is why Wittgenstein can, and indeed does, treat language-games as the kind of components that make up language. The second principal feature of language-games is therefore 230 P U §11. Cf. §§10-13 and 2 2 -23,65 respectively.

231 UG §56. Cf. also §§51, 501.

to isolate simplified forms of language-using activity. However, while Wittgenstein thought that language could - at least for the purposes of comparison and eliminating misunderstanding - be decomposed into, or modelled in terms of pared-down typological situations, the general link between sign use and practice is treated as intrinsic and irreducible, as a feature indispensable for language-games’ functioning as ‘objects for comparison’.

I now want to look more closely at what the claim that the use of certain concepts is internal to certain forms of practice amounts to. To do this, it will be helpful to consider the difference between the language-games of §2 and § 8 in PU. In §2 Wittgenstein describes a primitive language which ‘consists of the words “cube”, “column”, “slab” and “beam”’. This language is to allow ‘communication’ between two builders, such that when builder A calls one of the terms builder B hands A the corresponding object. In § 8 this language is extended to include ‘a series of words used [...] like numbers’, the terms ‘this’ and ‘over there’, and colour patterns. This enables, as Wittgenstein points out, an extended range of commands to be deployed in the task of fetching building blocks. The language-game of § 8 obviously differs from §2 in introducing new ‘kinds of words’ (PU §17). But rather than characterizing these in grammatical or logical terms, which he conspicuously avoids, Wittgenstein is more concerned with the underlying issue of what it is to differ in these ways. His general point is reasonably clear: By emphasizing the use (Gebrauch) made of expressions, their role in human practice or language-games, and the variety of functions served by linguistic ‘instruments’, he aims to highlight the inadequacy of the conception of language attributed to Augustinus in § 1 that models the function of all linguistic terms on the paradigm of naming or referring to objects. The point of § 8 thus seems to be to introduce terms that are difficult to assimilate to the paradigms of ostensive definition and naming.

But how does this count against the ‘Augustinian’ view? One might simply respond that in § 8 too the basic function of linguistic tools is to refer, that the key difference between the concepts Wittgenstein discusses lies in their referential properties, and that precisely these explain their varying roles in language-games. In other words, why shouldn’t one insist on a uniform, reference-based explanation, and downplay Wittgenstein’s pragmatic perspective on language as prima facie appearance?

Wittgenstein’s answer to this must be taken to include three claims. First, that referential (naming) relations are not primitive, i.e. something about which nothing further of ‘semantic’ relevance can be said. For while intimating that it will always be possible to say that a word ‘stands for’ (bezeichnet) something or other, Wittgenstein claims that generally speaking this is uninformative {PU §§10, 13; cf. §14). This is reminiscent of Heidegger’s view that relationships between signs are ‘easily formalized’ in a way that ‘levels o ff their phenomenal content {SZ 78, 8 8). However, Wittgenstein differs from Heidegger in being more explicit about what gets lost in suggesting that what it is for something to be a referent can be explicated by describing corresponding language-games. Second, Wittgenstein must be taken to be denying that extensions have explanatory primacy. This is to be expected, if describing language-games shows us what it is to be a referent, as this suggests that the role of expressions in language-games is extension-determining rather than extension-determined. Together these two claims imply that to describe the functioning of expressions merely in extensional terms is a superficial, philosophically unsatisfactory approach. The inadequacy Wittgenstein highlights lies in that, were it not for the different roles they play in our actions, we would have no grasp of the different ways in which, for example, concepts of number, colour, form etc. refer. So there is a clear asymmetry: someone who understands how the language-game works will understand what reference is in its context, whereas someone who understands which referents are being picked out need not understand what is going on. In fact, thirdly, the PU challenges the very idea of what might be called simple referring. For Wittgenstein not only relates the intelligibility of ostensive definitions to the context of language-games, and discredits the idea of primitive simples that might be referred to in an ideal language, but also suggests that to point to something in an inarticulate way is not to understand it (cf. PU §§28-37, 46-64, 261). The upshot of this is that any reference to entities or features of the world - articulate referring, as I shall call it - picks out a referent as a such-and-such, and that the language-game environment determines what this such-and-such-ness is.

232 P U §37. Hence Hintikka/Hintikka’s (1986, 212) emphasis on the role o f language-games in establishing '‘the basic semantic links between language and reality in Wittgenstein’s mature philosophy’. This somewhat misleadingly hints that there is still a problem o f contact between language and (nonlinguistic?) reality and such thing as ‘basic’ links. However, as Harris nicely argues, an important implication o f Wittgenstein’s later views is to break with the foundationalist idea that ‘language touches or connects with the world only at certain points’ since ‘language is embedded in reality and vice versa’ (Harris 1986, 43, 47).

Wittgenstein’s own proposal can be understood only by clarifying what he means by the function or the role of words. It might otherwise be felt that his talk of ‘roles’ in a language-game, or ‘forms of life’, is just as uninformative as general talk of reference. To get clearer about the important difference between the language- games of § 2 and §8, and so what it is for words to function in different ways, it will be instructive to consider a variation on the builders’ language-game that I shall call §2*: Imagine the builders of §2 always saying ‘red brick’ instead of ‘cube’, ‘white marble’ instead of ‘column’, ‘grey concrete’ instead of ‘slab’, and ‘brown wood’ instead of ‘beam’. Each word of §2 is thus replaced by two, one (we can imagine) being used as a colour word, the other to identify kinds of material. What difference does this make? Does the use, or the role, of the composite expressions in §2* differ from that of the simple expressions in §2? This question can be approached in two ways. On the one hand, to an onlooker attending to the conditions of utterance and the effects of various expressions their roles would look the same. To him the difference between the two language-games is merely notational. On the other hand, if the expressions in the revised language-game are genuinely being used to refer to colours and materials, their roles differ in that the building blocks are picked out in different ways in the two language-games: What in §2 is identified as a cube simpliciter, is picked out in the new variation as a colour-material composite, i.e. as a red something and as a brick something etc.234 So although the commands uttered in both cases are in some sense coextensive, the referring in §2* is the result of a twofold determination. An indication of this difference in roles is that in §2* one would expect speakers straightforwardly to understand hitherto unheard combinations such as ‘red marble’ and ‘brown brick’. But even if not obviously manifested, the two language-games nonetheless differ in their internal structure.