Understanding the Nature and Purpose of Language from Wittgenstein's View

 

SAINT JOSEPH JESUIT SCHOLASTICATE VIETNAM PROVINCE OF THE SOCIETY OF JESUS

 

 

 

Understanding the Nature and Purpose of Language from Wittgenstein's View

 

 

A Term Paper submitted to the Course of Philosophy of Language at Saint Joseph Jesuit Scholasticate

 

presented by

Joseph Nguyễn Minh Đức, S.J.

 

 

supervised by

Dr. Remmon E. Barbaza

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

October, 2023

“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”[i] Ludwig Wittgenstein

Abstract

Perhaps rarely do we question the origin and purpose of language. Normally, we often understand language as a tool that helps us communicate daily with each other. However, the main purpose of language is to communicate, and what is the true nature of language? If we use language to communicate, why do people sometimes misunderstand each other? When they do not understand each other, what do they do to overcome that situation? This article will address those issues based on the views of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951) in his work Tractatus Logico Philosophicus.

Keywords

Language, World, Wittgenstein.

 

I.      Purpose of language

When we study language, many people agree that language is a tool for people to communicate with each other. Indeed, we understand each other better through communication through language. For example, when someone says something that we hear and understand, as well as when they write words and we read and understand the meaning of that message, it all flows from language. Of course, it is also necessary to assume that we have learned and understood the language well. For example, someone writes an English sentence, and because I have learned English, I understand that sentence.

Many people also consider language as a gift. Of course, we use this gift often in our daily lives. It is even more important because, without language, it is difficult for us to understand each other when communicating. It is through language that we develop in many aspects, especially knowledge. An example is when people invented writing around the 4th century BC. Then, people have contributed to building and developing human civilization. It is through language that good ideas are passed on to the next generation and thereby form a unique culture. Therefore, language can be considered a special and unique gift because it becomes a fundamental and decisive factor for human development in all areas of society.

In fact, language has many different forms, but all carry a certain socially conventional meaning. For example, speech, writing, images, symbols, signs, etc. are all used by humans to communicate and understand each other. However, each form of language has different purposes and meanings. For example, symbols are also an important form of language in our lives. For example, when participating in traffic, we see a red light at an intersection, and that is the sign that everyone agrees to stop moving, and when we see the green light appear, we understand it as a sign that we are allowed to move. All of those things are very real because they have meaning and are truths that most people in society conventionalize and accept.

Language is a means of thinking. With Wittgenstein, he argued that when I think in language, I have no “meaning” in my mind other than verbal expressions. Speech itself is a linguistic tool to express and express human thoughts. Wittgenstein even believed that a picture is also a sign of truth; "a picture is a fact"[ii] and “the world is the totality of facts, not of things”.[iii] Wittgenstein's above argument may be correct because if an artist has ideas in his mind and he realizes them through painting, then that is a very real thing. Therefore, this world is also the sum of realized ideas.

Wittgenstein believed that, problems related to philosophy in the phenomenal world are solved logically and dialectically. Indeed, at the beginning of the Tractatus, he assimilated the world with the proposition: the world is all that is the case. At the same time, he also asserted that the subject does not belong to the world; rather, it is the limit of the world. He sees something else, which is ‘a sense of mystery about the world in general’. Anything that cannot be proven to correspond to a certain observable reality, then it is something that we cannot completely finally, he asserted ‘to imagine a language is to imagine a form of life.’

II.    Nature of language

As for Noam Chomsky, he observes that “when we study human language, we are approaching what some might call the ‘human essence.’”[iv]  The special qualities of the mind are, as far as we know, uniquely human and inseparable from any important phase of human existence, individual or social. This means that it points to the cognitively bound nature of language. Meanwhile, Gadamer first introduced this idea in the third part of Truth and Method, in which he detailed his views on language: “It is the medium of language alone that, related to the totality of beings, mediates the finite, historical nature of man to himself and to the world”[v]. With Wittgenstein, he admitted that language plays a very important and dominant role in forming concepts when studying philosophy.

When studying linguistic philosophy, everyone acknowledges the basic nature of language, which always begins and is built on three basic aspects: vocabulary, phonetics, and grammar. At the same time, language often has a structure consisting of three elements: sign language (morphology), structural language (syntax), and meaning language (semantics). However, using language fluently and communicating perfectly is not easy for some people. Therefore, many times people communicate without understanding each other, leading to misunderstandings and conflicts. To deal with the complexity of language, Wittgenstein proposed that we must use language logically, meaning that spoken or written sentences must be semantically clearer and more useful.

In Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, Wittgenstein writes: “A state of affairs is a combination of objects.”[vi] Indeed, he believed that the world is a combination of facts, whereas truth is a combination of objects. World = events + events and event = objects + objects. And they are combined together. So language comes with the world and words and labels come with things. Wittgenstein believed that humans are oriented toward objects (property), which contrasts with the idealism in which Russell believed that 'nothing exists independently'.

When discussing objects, Wittgenstein conceives that “objects are simple.”[vii] and that, in fact, “things are independent in so far as they can occur in all possible situations, but this form of independence is a form of connection with states of affairs, a form of dependence.”[viii] He believes that the basis for forming linguistic concepts is when the mind moves into conceptual space and the conceptualization of the world. Indeed, ““if the world had no substance, then whether a proposition had sense would depend on whether another proposition was time.”[ix] Therefore, we see that Wittgenstein's logical system has a triadic nature: thought-world-languages are directly related to each other. For example, if we say ‘an orange on the table’ then it is true; but if you say "orange is comfortalbe", this statement will be meaningless because there are many interpretations. Thus, Wittgenstein concludes: “Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.”

In fact, when we use language to communicate, specifically words, writing, or symbols, they must be meaningful and understandable, not how we feel and express them specificall vague about it with the words are poverty and lack of meaning. Therefore, Wittgenstein believes that misunderstanding how language works will lead to this life being full of artificiality. He explains that “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”^[x] Therefore, he suggested that everyone should pay attention to the meaningless things in themselves, and the most necessary thing in daily communication is that we use words more accurately and clearly, and that is the way we study philosophy.

Finally, Wittgenstein says: “My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical when he has used them as steps to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright.”[xi] Therefore, ‘the effort of philosophy is to eliminate oneself and liberate’. With Wittgenstein’s final thesis in Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, he determined the nature of language, finally finding the origin of silence. He writes “language of being is big silent” and in the reality of our daily lives, it is very true to say that “nature likes to hide”. According to Wittgenstein, silence is the origin of language, and “what we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.”[xii]

Conclusion

As Stephen Hawking (1942-2018) said, the only remaining task of philosophy is the analysis of language, and Wittgenstein said: "Philosophical criticism is linguistic criticism." [xiii] He argues that philosophy is the fight against the bewitchment of our intelligence by the use of language. And that lesson is worth repeating every day, if not every hour, so that we understand that the relationship between language and the world is not as simple as what we encounter every day. Therefore, Wittgenstein frankly revised the analytical perspective, breaking down language into propositions to penetrate the nature of existence and complexity in the language. So every time we encounter this problem, we have to “find the difference between each clause"[xiv] and we use words more accurately and clearly to express it better.

Biography

 

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, Translation by D. F. Pears & B. F. McGuinness, New York: The Humanities Press,

Noam Chomsky, Language and Mind, Third Edition, Cambridge University Press, 2000, 88

Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, Second, Revised Edition, Translation revised by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Mars, 2004, 454

 

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[i] Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, Translation by D. F. Pears & B. F. McGuinness, New York: The Humanities Press, n.5.6, 115

[ii] Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, Translation by D. F. Pears & B. F. McGuinness, New York: The Humanities Press, n.2.141, 15

[iii] Ibid. n. 1.1, 7

[iv] Noam Chomsky, Language and Mind, Third Edition, Cambridge University Press, 2000, 88

[v] Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth  and Method Second, Revised Edition, Translation revised by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Mars, 2004, 454

[vi] Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, Translation by D. F. Pears & B. F. McGuinness, New York: The Humanities Press, n.2.01, 7

[vii] Ibid, n.202, 11

[viii] Ibid, 2.0122, 9

[ix] Ibid, 2.0211, 11

[x] Ibid, 5.6, 115

[xi] Ibid, n. 6.54, 151

[xii] Ibid, n. 7, 151

[xiii] Ibid, n. 4.0031. 37

[xiv] Ibid, n. 3.3442