Question : Give a critical evaluation of Wittgenstein’s ideas of ‘language game’ and family resemblance.
(1996)
Answer : In order to address the countless multiplicity of uses, their un- fixedness, and their being “part of an activity”, Wittgenstein introduces the key concept of ‘language-game’. He never explicitly defines it since, as opposed to the earlier ‘picture’; for instance, this new concept is made to do work for a more fluid, more diversified, and more activity-oriented perspective on language. Throughout the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein uses the concept of language-games to make clear his lines of thought concerning language. Primitive language-games are scrutinized for the insights they afford on this or that characteristic of language. Thus, the builders’ language-game, in which a builder and his assistant use exactly four terms (block, pillar, slab, beam), is utilized to illustrate that part of the Augustinian picture of language which might be correct but which is, nevertheless, strictly limited. “Regular” language-games, such as the astonishing list provided in (which includes, e.g., reporting an event, speculating about an event, forming and testing a hypothesis, making up a story, reading it, play- acting, singing catches, guessing riddles, making a joke, translating, asking, thanking, and so on), bring out the openness of our possibilities in using language and in describing it.
Some properties of language-games can be noticed in Wittgenstein’s several examples and comments. They are, first, a part of a broader context termed by Wittgenstein a form of life. Secondly, the concept of language-games points at the rule-governed character of language. This does not entail strict and definite systems of rules for each and every language-game, but points to the conventional nature of this sort of human activity. Finally, Wittgenstein’s choice of ‘game’ is based on the over-all analogy between language and game, assuming that we have a clearer perception of what games are. Still, just as we cannot give a final, essential definition of ‘game’, so we cannot find “what is common to all these activities and what makes them into language or parts of language”. It is here that Wittgenstein’s rejection of general explanations, and definitions based on sufficient and necessary conditions, is best pronounced. Instead of these symptoms of the philosopher’s “craving for generality”, he points to ‘family resemblance’ as the more suitable analogy for the means of connecting particular uses of the same word. There is no reason to look, as we have done traditionally and dogmatically for one, essential core in which the meaning of a word is located and which is, therefore, common to all uses of that word.
Family resemblance also serves to exhibit the lack of boundaries and the distance from exactness that characterize different uses of the same concept. Such boundaries and exactness are the definitive traits of form be it Platonic form, Aristotelian form, or the general form of a proposition adumbrated in the Tractatus. It is from such forms that applications of concepts can be deduced, but this is precisely what Wittgenstein now eschews in favor of appeal to similarity of a kind with family resemblance. Family resemblance is a philosophical idea proposed by Wittgenstein. The idea itself takes its name from Wittgenstein’s metaphorical description of a type of relationship he argued was exhibited by language. Wittgenstein’s point was that things which may be thought to be connected by one essential common feature may in fact be connected by a series of overlapping similarities, where no one feature is common to all.
Games, which Wittgenstein used to explain the notion, have become the paradigmatic example of a group that is related by family resemblances. The notion of family resemblance was introduced in the Investigations in response to questions about the general form of propositions and the essence of language - questions which were central to Wittgenstein throughout his philosophical career.
This suggests that family resemblance was of prime importance for Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, however, like many of his ideas, it is hard to find precise agreement within the secondary literature on either its place within Wittgenstein’s later thought or on its wider philosophical significance.
