Page 150 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

Truth and Meaning
Nondeclarative uses of sentences are therefore more important for children learning their first language and also anthropologists learning the languages of alien societies. It is no accident that the language- game that begins both PI and the Br.B is concerned with builders telling assistants what materials must be fetched. In addition, the game analogy helps end the obsession of philosophers with nouns and sub- stantives (man, sugar, today (Br.B: 77)) and encour- ages attention to be focused for once on all the other parts of speech (but, not, perhaps (Br.B: 77)) which, for obvious reasons, the denotative or matching model tends to overlook.
Wittgenstein's earliest interest (June 1930) in the games analogy came from noting that the rules of a game offered a way of understanding how ink marks or sounds could acquire significance without linking them to occult entities:
The truth in [mathematical] formalism is that every syn- tax can be regarded as a system of rules for a game— I was asked in Cambridge whether I think that math- ematics concerns ink marks on paper. I reply: in just the same sense in which chess concerns wooden figures. Chess, I mean, does not consist in my pushing wooden figures around a board. If I say 'Now I will make myself a queen with very frightening eyes; she will drive everyone off the board' you will laugh. It does not matter what a pawn looks like. What is much rather the case is that the totality of rules determines the logical place of a pawn. A pawn is a variable, like 'x' in logic
(quoted in Waismann 1967: 104)
For a time Wittgenstein continued to think of lan- guage as a rule-governed calculus, or series of calculi, but he soon grew disenchanted with the notion. The Italian economist Piero Sraffa is usually credited with breaking the hold this idea had on him.Wittgenstein was explaining that a proposition must have the same logical form as what it describes. Sraffa listened, made the Neapolitan gesture of brushing his chin with his fingertips, and then asked, 'What is the logical form of that?' In the following passage from PG (1933-34) he can not only be seen moving away from the more formal, logical area of language but simultaneously realizing the limitations of the chess analogy:
I said that the meaning of a word is the role which it plays in the calculus of language. (I compared it to a piece in chess.)... But let us think also of the meaning of the word 'oh!' If we were asked about it, we would probably say, 'oh!' is a sigh; we say, for instance, 'Oh, it is raining again already' and similar things. In that way we would have described the use of the word. But now what cor- responds to the calculus, to the complicated game which we play with other words? In the use of the words 'oh' or 'hurrah' or 'hm' there is nothing comparable.
(PG: 67)
By the time he came to write PI he had grown pro- foundly skeptical about the explanatory power of rules. In one of the earlier sections he begins to doubt
that any game can be said to be wholly rule-governed: 'I said that the application of a word is noteverywhere bounded by rules. But what does a game look like that is everywhere bounded by rules? whose rules never let a doubt creep in, but stop up all the cracks where it might?—Can't we imagine a rule determining the application of a rule, and a doubt which it removes— and so on?' (PI: §84). Eventually, in §§ 143-242, the whole notion of rule-following is placed under intense scrutiny. Basically, Wittgenstein's argument is that no occurrent mental event or disposition (including grasp of a formula) can explain why an individual follows a rule correctly. Correctness is determined by whether an individual follows a rule in the same way as all the other members of his society, and this depends on nothing more (but nothing less) than a shared sense of value, importance, similarity, and appropriateness. So-called logical necessity is a special case of psycho- logical necessity. In PI it is less the rule-governedness of certain games than the sheer multiplicity of games asawholethatmakesthemsuchacompellinganalogy for linguistic practices. At Sect. 65 of PI he considers an objection to his views:
'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 of language, is: what is common to all these activities, and what makes them into language or parts of language.'
He replies:
Consider for example the proceedings that we call 'games.' I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, Olympic games, and so on. What is common to them all?—Don't say: 'There must be something common, or they would not be called "games"'—but look and see whether there is anything common to all.—For if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that.
(PI: §66)
'Language game' is not a technical term with a strict definition, but a phrase intended to prompt the reader into seeing an analogy. This is important because there are aspects of games which are clearly not present in linguistic practices, and which are not, for the most part, of interest to Wittgenstein. Games are, in a sense, insulated from real life, whereas Wittgenstein would be the first to insist that language is very much part of it; most games—like rugby and cricket—do not develop and do not interact with one another, yet Wittgenstein clearly thought that language games do overlap, develop, and interact; finally, 'game' suggests something frivolous, a pastime, whereas most lan- guage-use is perfectly serious (although Wittgenstein does say at one point that even the amusingness of children's language games may be relevant to the con- cept he develops (Br.B: 81)). To keep the analogy in perspective it must be considered alongside two
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