While linguistic performance – the actual use of language in speech and writing – is the most natural and empirical manifestation of human language, performance does not sustain the conception of language as a system. Wittgenstein's mature work in the Philosophical Investigations, Jacques Derrida's poststructuralist deconstructions, and Davidson's skepticism about language itself are dramatic instances of the pull of linguistic performance away from the idea of language as a determinant system that can be caught by the net of linguistic theory. In fact, these most recent linguistic turns to language are turns away from linguistic theory altogether. Performance is used to foil the work of theory.

Language Games

The style of Wittgenstein's Investigations already exemplifies the philosophy of language Wittgenstein recommends in this work. Whereas the Tractatus appears as a systematic formal treatise with hierarchically ordered propositions and new symbols, the Investigations consists of, according to Wittgenstein himself, “remarks, short paragraphs,” sometimes “jumping from one topic to another” (1953, ⅸ). Instead of a scientific or scholarly essay, he offers “a number of sketches of landscapes, … really only an album” (ibid.). Accordingly, the Investigations is driven by what might be considered case studies.

Wittgenstein begins his Investigations not with his own words but with a passage from Augustine's Confessions where he recalls how he learned language. “When they (my elders) named some objects,” Wittgenstein quotes Augustine, “and accordingly moved toward something, I saw this and grasped that the thing was called by the sound they uttered since they wanted to point it out” (1953, §1).