Meaning and Use

Abstract

It is true, though not very enlightening, to say that the later Wittgenstein held that we should seek for the meaning of a word not by looking for some object corresponding to it, but by examining its use in discourse. That may appear to associate Wittgenstein with Strawson’s ‘theorists of communication intention’, but the assimilation is a deeply misleading one, for two reasons: first, because it suggests that Wittgenstein was proposing an analysis of the concept of meaning in terms of some concept of ‘use’, analogous to Grice’s proposed analysis of the concept of meaning in terms of the concept of intention, or Searle’s in terms of the concept of a speech act; and, secondly, because it suggests that Wittgenstein’s relationship to Frege in his later work was, like Grice’s or Searle’s, one of root-and-branch rejection.