School of thought
Ordinary Language Philosophy
Movement
Classification
- Period
- c. 1945-1970 CE
- Regions
- Europe (origin)
- Domains
- Philosophy of Language, Logic
Overview
Ordinary Language Philosophy held that many traditional philosophical problems arise from misuses of everyday language — not from deep metaphysical puzzles but from philosophers unwittingly twisting words away from their normal functions. Austin, Ryle, and others argued that careful attention to how words actually work in ordinary contexts dissolves or transforms the problems.
Key ideas
- Speech Acts: Austin showed that language does not merely describe the world — it acts upon it. 'I promise,' 'I pronounce you married,' and 'I bet you' are performative utterances that accomplish something in their very saying. Austin first set them apart from statements, which are true or false, then gave up the split: stating is also something done with words, and his general theory of speech acts covers both.
- Category Mistakes: Ryle argued that the mind-body problem rests on a category mistake — treating 'the mind' as if it were a thing of the same logical type as 'the body.' Asking where the mind is, is like asking where the university is after being shown all its buildings.
- Therapeutic Dissolution: Following the later Wittgenstein's insight that philosophical problems are often 'bewitchments' of language, ordinary language philosophers aimed not to solve traditional problems but to show them to be illusions born of linguistic confusion.
Key figures
J.L. Austin · Gilbert Ryle · P.F. Strawson · John Wisdom
Methods used
Positions held
- Meaning as Use
Question scope: The Grounds of Linguistic Meaning
Influenced by
- Analytic Philosophy
Took over the founding analytic move of treating philosophical questions as questions about language, and the practice of piecemeal conceptual analysis, applying both to everyday usage rather than to the logical form Russell and Frege sought beneath it.
Reacts to
- Logical Positivism
Against the positivists' project of an ideal formal language, Austin and Ryle argued that ordinary language works well and that forcing it into a logical calculus creates the very problems it claims to solve.
References
- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Ordinary Language Philosophy
- J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (1962), Lectures I and XI (performatives first set apart from true-or-false statements; the distinction later given up for a general theory of speech acts)
- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Ordinary Language Philosophy, §§1,3–4 — Formation: the Cambridge and Oxford philosophical circles, with postwar Oxford central from 1945.
- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Ordinary Language Philosophy, §§1 and 3
- How to Do Things with Words — J.L. Austin
- The Concept of Mind — Gilbert Ryle
- Individuals — P.F. Strawson