PRIVATE LANGUAGE/PUBLIC LANGUAGE: THE PLAYS OF PETER HANDKE AND THE LANGUAGE PHILOSOPHY OF LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN

The influence of Wittgenstein's ordinary language philosophy upon Handke's plays begins with a mutual fascination between playwright and philosopher with questions of language and meaning. The pre-occupations of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations--the identification of meaning with use, the analysis of language-games, the critique of the picture theory of language, and the argument against the logical possibility of private languages--also turn up as the subject matter of Handke's best and best-known play, Kaspar. Kaspar is a history of one person's total encounter with language from his first discovery of words and their uses to his final realization of the logical limits of language as a tool of communication.; The four short plays which preceded Kaspar--the Sprechstucke--attack similar questions of language. Each play approaches a different language problem. Prophecy illustrates the power of symbolism to beguile a speaker into misrepresenting the world about which he purports to speak. Offending the Audience demonstrates the confusion which results when a concept-word like 'expectation' is taken to be a picture of a private mental state. Self-Accusation shows the difference between rules which apply to particular language games and hypothetical, essential rules which might govern all language acts. Calling for Help playfully draws attention to the distinction between a name and the thing named. Each of these four short pieces also explicitly denies a picture theory of language and a mimetic theory of dramatic art.; Handke followed Kaspar with three more approaches to language and meaning. In My Foot My Tutor the playwright offered his most explicit description of the theatre-game language and its conceptual boundaries. Quodlibet is an exercise in the separation of words of meanings. The Ride Across Lake Constance demonstrates that no speaker can hope to affirm the truth of an elementary proposition through an appeal to the facts of the world.; In Handke's last play, The Unreasonable Are Dying Out, the playwright was able to introduce new topics into his dramatic work while making full use of the theatre-game language which he had explored and sharpened in his earlier works.