Ludwig Wittgenstein regards language as an ancient city at remark 18 in his Philosophical Investigations, as he states,
“a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, of houses with extensions from various periods, and all this surrounded by a multitude of new suburbs with straight and regular streets and uniform houses.” (Wittgenstein 11e)
To say that one regards our language in this way is the use of an analogy to explain the nature of language and distinguish it from Augustine’s view.
Augustine, as Wittgenstein quotes in remark #1, saw language as a correlation between a word and an object that the word stands for. Augustine arrived at this conclusion by appealing to how children develop language; ostensibly through pointing at an object and saying ‘dog.’ Wittgenstein believes that this signifying view of language is too simplistic as he demonstrates that it cannot account for the uses of such words as in his example of the shopping list ‘five red apples’ and the use of the word five. One can look up apple and red, but how would one understand the term five in this context by ‘looking it up’ as a signification? Certain words cannot be explained through signification and Augustine’s perspective creates more problems in our understanding. Wittgenstein suggests that we focus on the use, purpose and function of words instead of a correlation of signification of objects. (R5, pg 7e)
Learning language is training through ostensive pointing in the examples of ‘block’ or ‘slab,’ but what about when the builder points and says, ‘this-there’? Wittgenstein says,
“The pointing occurs in the use of the words too and not merely in learning the use.” (R9, pg 9e)
Here we see that ostensive, correlational understandings of language are not able to capture the nature of the words ‘this’ and ‘there.’ The meaning of these terms is determined by the use within the context and not limited to the association as would be for block. We can generalize the word block with the object ‘block,’ but the same generalization would not work for the words ‘this’ and ‘there.’ These terms can be applied to many different contexts and have different meanings depending on the function or use within the context.
In remarks 19 and 20, he comments on the elliptical nature of the word ‘Slab!’ being used as both a word and sentence. It can signify the object the builder is referring to, but also it can mean ‘bring me a slab’ or ‘I need a slab in this spot right here!’. The elliptical nature of the term ‘Slab!’ as a sentence is a short version of the builder stating, ‘Can you bring me another Slab and place it right here?’ The term “Slab!” can have many meanings and it is not limited to a signification but best understood in terms of the function or use of the term in the context it is uttered. Wittgenstein states,
“The sentence is ‘elliptical,’ not because it leaves out something that we mean when we utter it, but because it is shortened - in comparison with a particular paradigm of our grammar.” (R20, pg 13e)
Wittgenstein’s regard of language as an ancient city is supposed to show us how over time we have developed many different kinds of functions and uses of language. Terms have changed meanings over time and many expressions no longer have any use for us. The different functional pathways that language and the use of words has taken is akin to a city that has old and new functional parts to it. The city will have old roads that are no longer in use and new buildings in place of them, just as old terms or phrases had a very different function in the past as they do today.
The metaphor or analogy of the ancient city is a much more useful picture of language than the Augustinian conceptualization of signification. Wittgenstein expresses the problems with the signification conceptualization of language and solves these problems with his functional-use paradigm as depicted through regarding it as an ancient city. Such regarding is supposed to show how the layered, historical nature of language is similar to the development of a city. It helps us visualize language in a different way than the oversimplified signification paradigm.
References
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker, and Joachim Schulte. Wiley-Blackwell, 2009, pp. 5e - 13e)
Comments