Speech Acts in the Function of the Logic of Natural Language

Abstract

At the end of Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Wittgenstein realizes that the purification of the natural language of all linguistic contradictions undoubtedly eliminates the inadequacies of the semantic structure of a sentence, which with its superficiality discourages us from its actual sense; however, such a sentence cannot express its thought and remains void. As the logical-analytic treatment of sentences, following from the Tractatus, includes only a descriptive linguistic function, but no other functions accordingly produce a mistaken impression about the accuracy of its standpoint. The philosophy of late Wittgenstein, therefore, evolves from the conclusion that the equal treatment of different linguistic functions demands different methodology, as the analytic philosophers had presupposed at the turn of the 20th century. The speech act method as a simple language-game [Sprachspiel] enables a unified treatment of the meaning of the sentences of natural language. The paper is a representation of the speech act method in the late philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, as a search of necessary conditions of a sensible uttering.