What Does a Word Do?

1. Introduction

Ask what “chair” means and you will probably point at a chair.¹ Ask what “but” means and the pointing stops. This essay starts from that small embarrassment.

2. The Naming Picture

The picture is simple: words are labels, sentences are arrangements of labels.

2.1. What is the picture?

Each word is attached to an object, and understanding a word is knowing which object.

2.2. Is it really the picture?

Notice how much work “object” does here. A language-game such as giving orders needs words that never name anything. Formulas work too: $x^2 + y^2 = z^2$

3. Use and Meaning

Look instead at what a word does in a practice. Compare another essay on duty, where the same question returns.

4. What Follows?

Meaning stops being a private thing behind the word and becomes something we can observe, teach, and dispute.

Works Cited

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe, Blackwell, 1953.