| In the243-315sections of Philosophical Investigations from many different aspects Wittgenstein discussed "the private language" which he imagined, and the discussions are known as Wittgenstein’s Private Language Argument. The importance of this argument lies in:on the one hand, it criticized and questioned the traditional epistemology and metaphysics, which was arguable among the researchers, and on the other hand, its critique of the traditional theory of meaning, especially the referential theory which takes the truth conditions (the concept of truth) as the core, to some extent, promoted the study of the theory of meaning.Therefore, a study on Private Language Argument has its significance in the field of both philosophy and the philosophy of logic and philosophical logic.The paper’s significance of the study on Wittgenstein’s Private Language Argument from the aspect of the meaning of language is to clarify the difficulties when creating the theory of meaning about natural language so as to provide an available approach for the exploration of some new theory of meaning. This paper focuses on the connection between this argument and the meaning of language. It is based on the text of Private Language Argument to analyze the contemplation and problems of this argument exploring the meaning of language, and to summarize its contributions and influence on the theory of meaning, and also to investigate the concept of privacy and sensations which the argument referred to.Therefore, this paper made some study as following. Firstly, Chapter Ⅱ analyzes and summarizes the structure, importance and themes of the argument in order to have an overview of it, which is the basis of further more study of the later chapters. Secondly, Chapter Ⅲ analyzes the concept of privacy and sensations in the argument.(1) According to the argument, this chapter summarizes the Wittgenstein’s discussion about the two concepts;(2) this chapter summarizes the view of language community which some researchers put, and analyzes the doubt which some researchers gave about it;(3) from the historical and theoretical perspective, this chapter examines the reason why Private Language Argument discussed the two concepts, and from the new point of view of social community, it interprets the two concepts. Thirdly, Chapter IV studies the relationship between this argument and the theory of meaning. On the one hand, Private Language Argument’s exploration and thinking about the theory of meaning means to reflect the shortcomings of the traditional theory of meaning, especially the referential theory, rather than give a new theory of meaning; on the other hand, this argument also shows the difficulties when studying the theory of meaning, in particular, how to deal with the factor of the users of language when studying the theory of meaning, which is more helpful in studying the theory of meaning. Fourthly, Chapter V analyzes and summarizes Private Language Argument’s contributions and influence on the theory of meaning. On the one hand, its contributions lie in:(1) emphasis on ordinary analysis of natural language;(2) shows that the way based on privacy and sensations is not helpful to study the theory of meaning;(3) suggestion that the study on the theory of meaning should be dynamic and multidimensional;(4) emphasis on the priority of the users of language when studying the theory of meaning; on the other hand, the influence is:(1) influence on the theory of ordinary language;(2) influence on speech act theory;(3) influence on embodiment theory whose representative is Maurice Merleau-Ponty and George Lakoff&Mark Johnson.The possible innovation of this paper lies in:it takes the connection between Private Language Argument and the meaning of language as the core, and it comprehensively studies this argument from the aspects of privacy, sensations and the meaning of language, which,to some extent, avoids the monotony of previous researchers studying the argument and fills the gap in the related research field. |
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