Can anyone explain in their own words Wittgenstein's Language Game?

Question

Can anyone explain in their own words Wittgenstein's Language Game?

Answer 1

The basic idea is that words, "as such", don't have any meaning. We, the people who use the language, give them meaning.

The letters T, R and E have absolutely nothing at all to do with that brown stick with green leaves on top standing in the forest. Even the word "tree" as such has no logical connection to the thing in the forest - otherwise the word would be the same in every language of the world.

Therefore, when we speak, we act - we "do" something, we create meaning. You could compare the action of naming something to the move in a game. The term "game" is slightly confusing here, because Wittgenstein doesn't intend to describe language as a (children's) game in the usual sense of the word.

Quotation Wittgenstein:

"We are not able to clearly describe the terms we use - not because we do not know their definitions, but simply because they do not have one true definition. The idea that there must be one clear definition for each term is like imagining all children playing with balls to play following strict rules."

I'm trying to come up with simple examples, but I'm struggling a bit....

I had a friend who didn't know the English word "kettle". Instead, whenever we were in the kitchen, she would point at the kettle and use the word "boiling thing" - a word that in any other context wouldn't even make sense for a person hearing it.

Children learning to speak their own language often don't follow grammatical rules and create sentences that only their parents in that one given situation might be able to understand "da - da - ma" (meaning, "Give me this thing there, mommy").

If you look at situations like these, an utterance made, i.e. the language used only makes sense in this particular "game" context.

Definitely in my own words. But also a bit clearer for you....?

Answer 2

Wittgenstein's Concept of a Language Game

Web Link:  users.california.com/~rathbone/word.htm

This commentary on Ludwig Wittgenstein's concept of a "language game" is based on his  important book, the Philosophical Investigations, in which he introduced that concept..

If you would like to read the first 88 passages in the Philosophical Investigations, along with side by side commentary by Lois Shawver for each passage,

click here.

To watch a trailer (preview) of an educational film on Wittgenstein and Jean-Francois Lyotard, click here.

Enjoy+

Answer 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b65pUXdVE...

Try this one too.

Answer 4

A pretty good explanation exists at this link:

http://users.california.com/~rathbone/wo...

From that link I quote:

"In summary, the term "language games" has a family of related meanings.  It refers to models of primitive language that Wittgenstein invents to clarify the working of language in general.  It refers to games that children play that enables them to learn language and it refers to a multiplicity of language practices in our ordinary languages as well as the whole of any ordinary language.

"But for all of that complexity, it has some specific connotation that highlights certain dimensions of language that often pass unnoticed.  It draws our attention to the fact that learning a language is much more than just learning words. It draws our attention to the way language works to prompt a desired (or perhaps undesired) response.  It also draws our attention to the way in which these language games can be learned before we have mastered the individual concepts used in the game.  And it will later draw our attention to the way in which we can confuse language games and become muddled, how this is a natural and inevitable part of any philosophical attempt.  And, finally, the concept presents itself as a way of analyzing those muddles so as to dispel them."