The Rules of Language

Abstract

We have already indicated that what is peculiar about the rules of language and what makes their study an enterprise very different from the study of rules of football or chess is that they are largely merely implicit within our linguistic practices, rather than explicitly formulated. All of them cannot be explicit, on pain of a vicious circle. We can have explicit rules of chess or football; we cannot, however, have explicit rules for using language — at least not generally. The reason is that to have an explicit rule we already need (a) language. To have an explicit rule means to have something that must be interpreted, hence to be able to follow this rule we need some rule for the interpretation, which leads us into an infinite regress. Wittgenstein (1953, §85) analyzes the situation in the following way:

A rule stands there like a sign-post. — Does the sign-post leave no doubt open about the way I have to go? Does it show which direction I am to take when I have passed it; whether along the road or the footpath or cross-country? But where is it said which way I am to follow it; whether in the direction of its finger or (e.g.) in the opposite one? — And if there were, not a single sign-post, but a chain of adjacent ones or of chalk marks on the ground — is there only one way of interpreting them?