The Problem of Language

Before the advent of postmodernism, philosophers generally viewed language as concordant with reality. In other words, they assumed that words, phrases, and sentences corresponded to the objects in the world that they purported to describe. This assumption that a ‘signifier’ (most notably, in speech) necessarily relates to a specific ‘signified’ is known as ‘correspondence theory’. Philosophers of language seek to investigate the nature of this relation. They consider, among other questions, whether and how language reflects reality. This is known as ‘the problem of language’.

An outline of recent trends in the philosophy of language should begin with Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose works I also discussed at the beginning of the previous chapter. In particular, his Philosophical Investigations (in contrast to his earlier book, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus) offers seminal philosophical reflections on language. A number of thinkers subsequently built upon his pioneering insights, attesting to new understandings of the nature, function, and use of language. The numerous implications of Wittgenstein's observations in fields as varied as semiotics, cognition, sociology, linguistics, and more testify to the acuteness of the problem of language for philosophy.

Wittgenstein delved into the way language functions. In his later philosophical works, he abandoned the hope of constructing a linguistic system based on representation (one that could validate correspondence theory systematically). He recognized that the meanings of words cannot be derived solely from the objects they purport to describe (that is, from the world) but, rather, from the use we make of them in language. It is in this context that Wittgenstein coined the expressions ‘language game’ and ‘form of life’. Following his reasoning, the meaning of a particular word or phrase depends chiefly on the language game in which it is used. The word ‘game’, to take one simple example, can appear in a host of different formulas and sentences with differing meanings at each occurrence (board games, Olympic Games, mind games, and so on). Concurrently, language games reflect different forms of life—the activities in which individuals engage on a daily basis. This realization carries farreaching implications. Its most basic ramification is that language should not be understood to refer to anything beyond itself. Each language game operates according to its own parameters and is governed by its own particular rules.