Playing The Language-Game
1. "I want to play a game." Imagine a situation where upon hearing this, one knew precisely what game I had in mind e.g. standing on a basketball court. But, is it at all clear that one would know in this situation exactly which game using a basketball I did have in mind? But further imagine a situation in which one had absolutely no idea what game I intended when I said "I want to play a game."
2. The question this raises is: Exactly what do I need to intend, or more importantly, what do I need to communicate, in order for someone to understand what I mean when I say "I want to play a game"? Do I need to intend a specific game or for that matter do I need to have any game in mind? Compare this with what Wittgenstein says: "Some one says to me: "Shew the children a game." I teach them gaming with dice, and the other says "I didn't mean that sort of game." Must the exclusion of the game with dice have come before his mind when he gave me the order?" (p. 33e).
3. Let us take this imagining game one step further. Imagine a situation in which one had no idea what I was referring to when I said "I want to play a game." Before explaining what game you wished to play you would have to explain what you meant by "a game" to begin with. Language as a game (Cf. 66, 69).
4. You can do as many things with language as you can with the basketball in section one above. (Imagine all the various games you have played on the court.)
5. Related to this is Wittgenstein's suggestion to "make a radical break with the idea that language always functions in one way, always serves the same purpose" (PI 304).
6. In 65 Wittgenstein says: "Here we come up against the great question that lies behind all these considerations. For someone might object against me: "You take the easy way out! You talk about all sorts of language-games, but have nowhere said what the essence of a language-game, and hence language, is: what is common to all these activities, and what makes them into language or parts of language. So you let yourself off the very part of the investigation that once gave you yourself most headache, the part about the general form of propositions and of language."
7. There are three essential points to understand about language-games. 1 . The use of the term points to the notion that language is an activity. Language is both part of an activity (23) and an activity itself. 2. Language-games are not "hermetically sealed levels of discourse." They are interconnected and have "blurred edges" (Cf. 71). 3. Language is complicated; more so than it may first appear. What we can derive from this is that language, and the analysis of it, bears close inspection.
8. I suggest that we take Wittgenstein's own advice when we ask ourselves "What does he mean?" This would be something akin to what he says at 340: "One cannot guess how a word functions. One has to look at its use and learn from that." Let us look at how Wittgenstein himself uses the analogy between language and games.
9. We should begin with a caution as well as a very general statement of what he has in mind when using the term language-game. In 130 he says "Our clear and simple language-games are not preparatory studies for a future regularization of language, as it were first approximations, ignoring friction and air-resistance. The language-games are rather set up as objects of comparison which are meant to throw light on the facts of our language by way not only of similarities, but also of dissimilarities." The moral of the story is not to get carried away with the term at the expense of what the analogy between language and games can tell us.
10. Consider for example all the various ways Wittgenstein characterizes words themselves. This will perhaps make clearer what I meant in point one above; that language is an activity. Words are variously compared with tools (11), handles (12), and chess pieces (108). In the Philosophical Grammar Wittgenstein says things like "language is a collection of very various tools." "I said the meaning of a word is its role in the calculus of language. (I compared it to a piece in chess)" (Cf. PI 563). All these suggest that words and language are things we use in activity. "Language is an instrument" (569).
11. One of the most striking statements of this theme occurs in Culture and Value where he says "words are deeds" (p. 46e, Cf. PI 546).
12. Again in the Philosophical Grammar Wittgenstein says: "When one means, it is oneself doing the meaning; similarly, it is oneself that does the moving. One rushes forward oneself and one can't simultaneously observe the rushing. Of course not. Yes, meaning something is like going up to someone" (Cf. PI 457).
13. What this brings up is another interesting point of connection between language and games. A language without users is like a game without players. Consider 204: "As things are I can, for example, invent a game that is never played by anyone But would the following be possible too: mankind has never played any games; once, however, someone invented a game which no one ever played?"
14. If words are deeds and language in general is to be thought of as an activity then one might well ask "What sort of activity is language?" But this is precisely the point of the language-game. Language is not simply one activity. It can do many things. "Review the multiplicity of language-games" for there are many (23). Consider that "the German word for meaning is derived from the German word for pointing" (PG, p.56). Now compare this with what is said in the Philosophical Investigations 43: "the meaning of a name is sometimes explained by pointing to its bearer." Sometimes. And sometimes not?
15. What about the problem with the language game of PI 2 as a 'complete primitive language'?" But "it is easy to imagine a language consisting only of orders and reports in battle. Or a language consisting only of questions and expressions for answering yes and no. And innumerable others" (19).
16. What does this do to language, I mean "Imagine a language-game..."? Consider this example from Remarks on Colour: "A language-game: Report whether a certain body is lighter or darker than another" (1). Does this tell us that language-games are isolated or isolateable? Are these language-games "hermetically sealed?" Are the games in section 1 above with the basketball hermetically sealed?
17. "Well, perhaps not but it does mean that all these different games have different rules and these are isolated in some sense." This is a similar complaint to the one in 100: "But still, it isn't a game, if there is some vagueness in the rules." What is difficult here is to walk the very thin line between two extremes: both of which have been read into Wittgenstein. Extreme 1: There are no rules and we can use language willy nilly as we please making up all sorts of games. Extreme 2: Language is rule governed and the only way we get by in the world of language, the only way we communicate, is by acknowledging our common base of rules.
18. Part of what is going on here is a pointing to what is really involved in the notion of following rules. "We misunderstand the role of the ideal in our language" (100).
19. That language-games have "blurred edges" is not a plea for clearing up these blurs. The problem seems to arise precisely when we do this (but this is not an argument for unclear thinking). "Is an indistinct photograph a picture of a person at all? Is it even always an advantage to replace an indistinct picture by a sharp one? Isn't the indistinct one often exactly what we need?" (71). Compare this with the request to "Stand roughly here" (88).
20. Language is complicated. "Compare: inventing a game; inventing language; inventing a machine" (Zettel, 327 Cf. PI 492).
21. Can't we imagine shifting from game to game and also from language-game to language-game? (83).
22. For Wittgenstein the important thing about language is that "we remain unconscious of the prodigious diversity of all the everyday language-games because the clothing of our language makes everything look alike" (p. 244e). Compare this with the analogy brought up earlier in 12: It is like looking into the cabin of a locomotive. We see handles all looking more or less alike.
23. In Zettel, Wittgenstein says "saying something is an activity" (671). What makes language, especially its analysis so complicated is that this is the case; and more. Compare what is said in 23 of the Investigations: "Here the term language-game is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity." And think of how this relates to games which can also be both activities and part of an activity.
24. What points to this complicated nature of language in a more pronounced way is a topic which we can only hint at here, expressed in the Philosophical Grammar this way: "Is meaning then really only the use of a word? Isn't it the way this use meshes with our life? But isn't its use a part of our life?" (p. 65). Compare this with Zettel 173: "(Only in the stream of thought and life do words have meaning)." Now finally, compare this with what is said in the Philosophical Investigations: "the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life" (23). This helps clarify the problem in section 12 above: "to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life" (19).
25. Above all I do not want to fall into the trap that Wittgenstein continuously warns us about; the temptation to say "Language is...." To combat this temptation we should keep in mind the advice in 65: "instead of producing something common to all that we call language, I am saying that these phenomena have no one thing in common which makes us use the same word for all, but that they are related to one another in many different ways."
26. The fundamental nature of language. Consider 491: "Not: 'Without language we could not communicate with one another' but for sure: without language we cannot influence other people in such-and-such ways; cannot build roads and machines etc. And also without the use of speech and writing people could not communicate."
27. What I have tried to do is construct a sign-post marking out several things. I have tried to highlight what is important to Wittgenstein about language-games. This sign-post is a direction for us to engage the text and Wittgenstein. "The sign-post is in order if, under normal circumstances, it fulfills its purpose"
28. Once I was accused of being "misled by ordinary language" in an academic paper. Come to think of it, this is possible. Isn't it?