Are We Talking About the Same Thing?

Playing the language game at the Marlay

The Set-up

Imagine a bunch of us, including you, sitting at the mafia table in the back of the Marlay in downtown Decatur, Georgia. While the drinks are on their way, we’re well into the preliminaries: summer plans, a movie or two worth checking out, a good book, light kvetching about this and that, and so on.

“Who has the Night on Ponce?” the server asks. Ah, that’s me, thank you. The rest of the drinks are passed around the table, a toast is made to good health and a not-too-oppressive Georgia summer, and then Matt, at the bottom of the U-shaped banquette, eager to get things moving, unloads: “Listen, there’s gotta be justice in the subway killing in New York. I just want to get that out there.”

There are murmurs of assent here and there, but it’s uncertain whether everyone knows exactly what’s going on—or whose side they’re on. Others jump in, also tossing around the word justice. “This is a matter of social justice for the victim!” Rachel declaims. “We need to—”

“Wait!” Bryant loudly interrupts. “What about justice, social or whatever, for the Good Samaritan, who was arrested and charged?”

“The guy’s a criminal, for God’s sake! What is this justice you’re talking about?” Jolie cries, as she emphasizes the operative word.

“The so-called victim is the criminal, Jolie! Yes, let’s talk about justice!” I’m not sure who said that. Everyone seems to be talking at once on this roiling issue.

“Exoneration of the Good Samaritan would be justice for him and all the people everywhere who are fearful of violence on the subway!”

“The victim deserves justice, and that means punishment of that guy who killed him!”

 As the hapless moderator I’ve got to get control of the table. And all I can come up with is certain to annoy everyone. I take a long draft, and then, finally, with the attention of the group I calmly say, “So, several people have said something about justice. That’s the predominant word so far. And I’ve just gotta ask: “What exactly is it?”

Murmurs all around. And then Marcus, a gruff and excitable progressive, less patient than the others, pounces.

“Oh, c’mon, man! What craziness possesses you? If you want to know what justice is, you should state it and not ask! There are many who can ask but not answer.” (This causes me to think of Socrates—and his sad fate.)

I coolly take in his retort for a moment and briefly imagine having used that in my university days in reply to a professor’s question on definition. What craziness possesses you? Unperturbed, partly because Marcus and I go back many years, I then recall aloud, from some book, Lincoln’s saying, “We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.”

No one is impressed, and I quickly add that the question—What is justice?—hasn’t been answered at the table.

The Language Game

In conversation, including around this table, nothing is quite as challenging, often in a background kind of way, as definition. Words are inexact. Stating facts, in contrast, is a breeze. But definition? What do you fall back on? There’s no uber authority and no word is self-defining.

In light of the differing views on the NYC subway tragedy, when it comes to justice, what if we’re not all talking about the same thing? How can we discuss anything whose “meaning in the mind” might vary from person to person? It’s not as if each person is asked for their definition of justice. Does that ever happen anywhere?

Moving on from that for a moment, we don’t learn anything that could be called “the definitive rules of language” in school. We more or less acquire a set of rules called grammar and we learn a lot of vocabulary. We could call these the basic rules of language; however, there are no strict rules on how we talk with one another. 

So how do we learn to converse? The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (d. 1951) said the only way we truly learn how to talk with one another, so that we make any sense at all, is .   .   .  to talk with one another. That’s it. And he called this a game. The language game. Words—their meanings, pronunciation, appropriateness—acquire their characteristics from use. We learn language by using it, by playing it, which seems to invoke a Catch-22, but we nonetheless somehow make it work for us.

I joined a softball league just after college. I knew most of the “rule-book rules,” having come along in youth playing baseball. But when I joined a certain team (the Base Invaders), I learned a unique set of unwritten rules, which included: how we were to shift for certain batters; the two ways the team preferred to make a double play at second; the particulars of how we backed up one another; and so on. The only way you could really learn these rules was to play. The rule book had nothing to say about our pitcher’s unique way of backing up the catcher when a runner was heading for home. I learned that, and the other off-the-book rules, by playing with this particular team.

It’s the same for language and its own game. We get the real rules by playing the language game, by simply talking with others, by immersing ourselves in—and being ever aware of—context, Wittgenstein observed. Words—people!—make sense only in that context. As we play the game, we come closer (but not always fully) to understanding what others are saying, what they mean by the words and sentences they’re articulating.

We are always playing the language game when we’re talking, as we are at the Marlay. And the very words we’re using, including justice, only make sense (to the extent they make any sense at all) in the presence of the language game we’re currently playing.

Of course while we may better understand what’s being said as we become more practiced in the game, there is no guarantee that we’ll agree on what’s being said.

We may even understand one another a little better after the likes of this three-hour robust, sometimes chaotic confab at the Marlay. But I suspect a few of us will wander out into the evening wondering just what craziness possessed so-and-so on what they thought justice meant.

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R.J. Long, who knows how to play the game, hangs in there as reviewer of Wobble.