The Origins of Contextualism

The Origins of Contextualism

André Leclerc

Contextualism is today one of the most important philosophical approaches to natural languages. Works by Searle, Travis, Recanati, Bezuidenhaut, to name a few, made it well known. I want to show how much they owe to Wittgenstein and Austin. A basic idea of contextualism is that the meanings we express in any context of use are always situated. This phenomenon, as a matter of fact, has been observed a long time ago and can be traced back to the ideational theories of language. A reasonable interpretation of the following passage of Locke’s Essay... seems to go in that direction: “[...] words in their primary or immediate signification stand for nothing but the ideas in the mind of him that uses them, however imperfectly or carelessly those ideas are taken from the things they are supposed to represent.” (Locke, Essay, Book III, Chapter ii, 2). The words “however imperfectly or carelessly” indicate that the meanings expressed are always parts of the speaker’s idiolect. This allows for differences in meanings. This is why we communicate with difficulties in so many occasions. Wittgenstein says, in the Big Typescript, and later in the Philosophical Investigations (560):“The meaning of a word is what the explanation of its meaning explains.” The sense of a word is now tied to the use of the word, that is, to what we do with it. Actions are events, thence particulars, taking place in a highly specific context. The sense of a word is not seen anymore as something stable, well defined once and for all. Words serve in the achievement of our perlocutionary plans. They are used to realize fine-grained adjustments in infinitely many situations. Austin, with his “context-sensitive semantics” (especially “Truth” [1950]) complete the picture. “There are various degrees and dimensions of success in making statements: the statements fit the facts always more or less loosely, in different ways on different occasions for different intents and purposes.” (130). Consequently, what has been said is not detachable from speaker’s intentions and the circumstances in which the utterance took place.