Language-Games
We are like a fly trapped beneath a glass. Therefore, the dilemma is as follows: I do not know my way out. Wittgenstein’s solution was the concept of a language-game. In order to bring about the functioning of language, we must settle for forms of language that are drastically simpler than those in normal use.
The construction of language-games shows how the language works.Every isolated part of language can be understood as its own language-game. Therefore, prayers, requests, recommendations and the language used in a butcher’s shop, as well as the highly technical language of professionals, are all languagegames. The same holds true as regards DSL and the different games that are played inside it. On the other hand, the exact number of existing language-games can never be known. This is due to the fact that at every moment, some language-games disappear and are replaced by new ones. Language is a dynamic totality of languagegames.
Some of the main features of the Wittgenstein philosophy of language will be dealt with in this study. There is a huge amount of literature on this topic. My idea is not to debate with different authors, and least of all to say what Wittgenstein really thought. In recent philosophy there have been a lot of attempts to do that. The following presentation concentrates on such characteristics as seem to be useful for the theory of DSL. In this regard, the analysis introduced by Jaakko (and Merrill) Hintikka has been of great importance in the development of my thinking for many years.
Jaakko and Merrill Hintikka have characterised the change in Wittgenstein’s thoughts as a move away from ostension-based naming, first to the idea of following rules and then as a comprehensive solution, to the concept of a language-game. In all phases, the question is about the relationship between language and reality - that is, language and the world.
But this relationship is radically different in languagegame theory than it is in the theory of ostension or in that of following the rules (Hintikka 1976, 191).According to the Hintikkas, Wittgenstein did not fully give up on the Augustinean theory of ostension. He supplemented it with the idea of following rules (Hintikka 1976, 202; Marmor 1993, 147; Winch 1958, 24; Schauer, 225; Malcom 1995, 145; Aarnio 1997, 109). The meaning of words is in their way of use, or, to put it more precisely, in the grammar that defines their use. Therefore, language can be taught to someone else by teaching the rules of the grammar that regulates the use of the language. ‘The rules constitute the meaning', Wittgenstein writes (Wittgenstein 1967, 3). For its part, the rule can be recognised by pointing it out, by ostension. For example, if I say “red” and point at a red piece of paper, I have articulated a rule by which the term red is used.
Following this idea, rules are everything that has to be or can be learned. One cannot get behind the rules because there is nothing behind them. When one studies language he or she envisages it as a game with fixed rules, and compares it with, and measures it against, a game of that kind.
Still, it became clear to Wittgenstein that the very status of the rules was problematic. What does it mean to follow a rule? The simplest answer is obviously that following a rule is the same as acting in accordance with it. Nevertheless, it is not nearly that simple. We are immediately faced with the question: How can we know that the rules really have been followed, and that they have been followed correctly?
It could very well be that when teaching a language, the student coincidentally happens to catch the correct use of the term, for reasons other than following the rules. This means a difference has to be made between the concept of following a rule and the fact that someone behaves in the way presumed by the rule. The problem has not been exhausted, even with this distinction.
There must be some reason for following a rule, and this reason cannot be another rule. Otherwise, the problem has merely been moved to an upper level - i.e., to the meta rules defining the use of first-degree rules, which, in its turn, leads to an endless chain of rules, since the following of a meta-level rule also needs to have a basis in another metalevel rule.A solution like this did not satisfy Wittgenstein, and he took distance from the notion of following rules. However, what does it mean that in the end one already has to know something before asking its name? What is that “something” that must be known? For Wittgenstein, the final solution is the concept of a language-game. They are in themselves complete. Wittgenstein notes that the thing we call a relationship between a name and an object is defined solely by the proper language-game. However, no single and simple name-object-relationship prevails. On the contrary, there are as many relationships as there are elements we generally call “names”. The terms we use really do gain their meaning only in the context they belong to at any given time, or, as Wittgenstein himself says, Words have their logical home within the sphere of language (Wittgenstein 1967, 7; Hintikka 1976, 194). What is important is that, at this stage of Wittgenstein's thinking, language-games are prior to the rules (Hintikka 1976, 201; Malcom 1995, 145).
Language-games are no replacement for the act of naming, for the naming takes place in the game and the game constitutes the name relationship. From this it follows that the games precede rules in a conceptual sense. The Hintikkas summarise the issue as follows: “In later Wittgenstein, language-games are truly the measure of all things” (HIntikka 1976, 196).
The fact that the language-game precedes the rules makes one understand why Wittgenstein emphasised that playing a language-game does not mean the same as following rules blindly. The player does not simply follow a rule as if the rule were a “recipe” or a formula articulated in advance.
Wittgenstein's core idea is that we cannot find out what it means to play a language-game if we refer to following a rule, because one understands the rule while playing the language-game. Following a rule is playing and, to quote the Hintikkas: “You learn new rules by mastering the language-games of which they are a part” (Hintikka 1976, 196). In other words, we can imagine someone having learned the game without ever learning or formulating the rules.All this is also true as far as DSL is concerned. DSL consists of numerous different language-games, every one specific to a certain field of law, such as civil or penal law. The scholars do not know in advance which are the rules defining the meaning of a statute at issue. The meaning will be revealed during the game. In DSL, learning a language, as well as the interactive understanding of another person, also means taking part in language-games, because a language-game is an activity; it is action.
The structure of the game shows what can be formulated in it, because the language-game locks down the meaning. Nothing has so far been done when something has been named. It has not even got a name, except in the languagegame. Taking part in a language-game means participation in shared beliefs, or, as Wittgenstein puts the idea: “People's shared way of acting is the frame of reference, by means of which we interpret unknown language” (Wittgenstein 1967, 206; Sandbacka 1987, 31). Playing a game is above all about gaining experience, not about propositionally explaining the game to another person.