Language Limits Our World

Language Limits Our World

When Wittgenstein said, "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world," he was very likely speaking of philosophical limits, and not phenomenological ones. However, inherent in the very possibility of considering language and limitations is the possibility of a phenomenological meaning as well. Indeed, it one has language that is too impoverished to admit of various experiences, one is very unlikely to have them, or, if one does have those experiences, of recalling them. We recall our lives in language.

This may help explain, to use a completely pedestrian example, the idiotic answers people give to questions asked by Jay Leno on his Jaywalking segments. The ignorance shown by the interviewees is legendary, and it also involves mistakes with and misconstructions of language. For example, he might ask who wrote the Gettysburg Address, and he might get the answer, "The guy who founded Gettysburg." One might consider the answer to be a mistake in facts. However, one might also consider that the respondent did not know that the term address was synonymous with speech, and therefore guessed at a likely response based on the limits of that person's knowledge of language.

To Wittgenstein's belief that understanding, even of the words of a known language, also bears some credence, both philosophically and phenomenologically. For example, phenomenologically, if someone says to you, "I'm coming over," you must be able to deduce that she means coming to your dwelling. If you took the word 'over' at face value, the sentence would be meaningless as 'over' literally means 'above.'

Knowing the context of what your friend is saying, something about a visit, means you will clearly know she is not about to hire a hovercraft and literally hover 'over' your dwelling.

It is easy to see the limits an impoverished knowledge of languge places on one in the world of events. But impoverished language is equally potent in the world of thought. If one cannot think about something, whether an emotion or an action, then one cannot act in respones to that emotion or action. It requires a motivating thought, in language, for humans to act. Thus thought is at the base of all, and language is at the base of thought. While Wittgenstein for a time contended that the language did no more than create picture, in fact it does that, but also allows us to put the pictures into a context, one requiring a response, or not. Our responses will be limited -- unless something is a purely physical response such as a sneeze after smelling pepper -- by the language we have to describe the possibilities. Without language to describe the possibilities, we would not be able to recall the possibilities, wht our action or lack of action entails, and wht it will produce. Without language, in fact, we cannot predict outcomes from known precedent. We cannot, in all likelihood, even define ourselves.