Language Games
Wittgenstein was an Austrian philosopher that had revolutionary ideas on human communication. In ‘Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus’ Wittgenstein investigates how human’s communicate ideas to one another, he suggested that humans use language to trigger images in each others minds. This idea was sparked by a Paris court case in which the judge ordered a visual recreation of the events, in this case a car crash, to gain more understanding of the situation. Wittgenstein asserts that we use words to make pictures of facts, in conversation we are exchanging pictures of scenes, although for the majority of people we find it difficult to conjure a picture in someone else’s mind that is accurate to our own, this breeds miscommunication. Another danger is that we read into other peoples explanations too much, conjuring an inaccurate image in our minds. This book was Wittgenstein’s effort to make people speak with more forethought, and control our interpretations.
‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent’ – Ludwig Wittgenstein
Later on in his life, Wittgenstein furthered his analysis of language with his second book ‘Philosophical Investigations’. In this, he suggested that language wasn’t just something to conjure images, it was tool that we use to play games, or rather ‘patterns of intention’. As children we learn by engaging in games, an activity with a set of rules that lay out parameters for us to move in. These parameters allow us to interact with each other effectively. Wittgenstein saw language as a game with parameters. However, within language there are many different games, one example might be a ‘stating facts’, another might be a more emotional type of game such as a ‘help and reassurance’ game. When a person enters a conversation engaging in one game, and another person is playing a different game, the wires get crossed and we misunderstand each other. Someone might say “You never help me”, this person might be trying to say, help me and I need reassurance, while the receiver could take it as “I do help you, here’s some examples”. The key to good communication is working out what games people are playing. We use language not only to understand each other, but to understand ourselves. It is reassuring to oneself when you have to hand a word that describes your mental state, a word that is universally understood by your peers.
‘Language is a public tool for the understanding of private life’ – Ludwig Wittgenstein
This suggests that the media we consume is an important means to self knowledge, reading books, watching films, and listening to discourse gives us tools to understand who we are. This is why the voice and language in media is so important to us, the human ear is predisposed to decoding these games, and through it we seek to understand ourselves.