On Family Resemblance
Another radical change in Wittgenstein's thinking dealt with the relationship between different language-games. There are an innumerable number of them. Old ones are constantly being taken out of use, with new ones taking their place.
As was noticed above, there are eternal dynamics going on in the language. What is significant is that the language-games are not simply mutually contradicting, separate and sealed; in a way, they are interlocked with each other.Wittgenstein talks about the family resemblance between language-games. Game A brings to mind B, B is like C, and so forth, with A and X seeming quite unlike each other. Wittgenstein himself clarifies the idea as follows: “We see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and crisscrossing; sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities in detail” (Wittgenstein 1967, 66; Hintikka 1976, 208, 1996b, 335).
This idea forced Wittgenstein to use the metaphor of language concealing itself in mist. It is impossible to show something that all language-games have in common, apart from the fact that they are language-games. What, for example, do the language-games used by a modern physicist and a Hindu priest have in common? On the other hand, there are a lot of similarities between the DSL language-games in civil and penal law. Still, even their language-games are far too complex and multi-layered for anyone to make statements about them as a whole.
Hence the philosophical problems are not within the search for this (unattainable) unity. The philosopher must leave the games as they are. His task is not to change language, and through it, the world, but to submit language to a closer look at it. The games, for their part, show the way language works. Nonetheless, this is not the whole story.