Abstract

According to the later Wittgenstein, any semantic theory of linguistic meaning presupposes a pragmatic account of how linguistic expressions are used. In Making it Explicit Robert Brandom accepts this Wittgensteinian privileging of pragmatics while maintaining the traditional semantic view that the propositional content expressed by a declarative sentence is paradigmatic of linguistic meaning. His project aims at assimilating these two commitments by developing an account of social practices sufficient to underwrite propositional utterances. My dissertation comprises a related but divergent project. I share Wittgenstein's doubt that declarative sentences and the propositions they express should serve as the paradigm for linguistic meaning. Consequently, I develop the concept of meaning as use by investigating why certain actions should be understood as specifically linguistic actions, without presupposing that linguistic meaning ultimately cashes out as propositional meaning. ;The dissertation consists primarily in my presentation and synthesis of two strands of thought: Wittgenstein's later philosophy of language, and the theory of social practices. In giving up propositional meaning as the definitive feature of language, Wittgenstein leaves it unclear how linguistic action ought to be distinguished from non-linguistic action. Specifically, he fails to address what it is about the "uses" of certain human performances that mark them pragmatically as linguistic. I answer this question by integrating Wittgenstein's basic insights on linguistic action with recent attempts in social theory to develop an ontology of social practices and actions. Through a critical examination of the work of sociologists such as Anthony Giddens and Pierre Bourdieu and philosophers such as Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Taylor, I provide a theory of social practices sufficient to articulate this linguistic/non-linguistic distinction. This result promises to clarify a number of fundamental issues in the philosophy of language, in social theory, and in Chomskian linguistics