Linguistic turn

From Geography

The linguistic turn originated in philosophy and gained attention through the theory of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein [1953]. With his entrance the focus is no longer on consciousness but language as the mediator between reality and the individual. All of our interactions are structured through language and no longer through consciousness.

He brought to our attention that every perception of the world is language-bound, so that language becomes the ‘mediator’ between reality and an individual. All of our actions function through communication. Consciousness is no longer the incentive. Miss-communication is therefore always a problem in language and not in consciousness. Language-actions can be analyzed through discourse. Michel Foucault was influenced by the linguistic turn as well.

Inter-subjectivity vs. Validity Claims

The linguistic turn can alse be described as the move from intersubjectivity to the validity claims of speech act and as the shift from a philosophy of consciousness to a philosophy of language (Schnädelbach, 1985). Another influential author is Richard Rorty, who initially came up with the term 'linguistic turn' (Zierhofer, W. 2002 p. 1360). One of the most important consequences of the shift was that philosophy and science were no longer to be understood as activities of cognition and representation - observing, reflecting, or gaining evidence - but rather as practical activities: talking, writing, describing and other intrinsically communicative activities (Zierhofer, W. 2002 p. 1360). In other words, 'thought' was replaced with 'language' as the dominating medium of meaning and thus instead of analyzing 'behaviour or actions' to deal with all central problems of philosophy it is 'communication' that has to be analyzed.

References

• Richard M. Rorty, University of Chicago Press, 1 mrt. 1992, The Linguistic Turn: Essays in Philosophical Method

• Alexander Dreiling, SAP Research; http://is2.lse.ac.uk/asp/aspecis/20060045.pdf

• Zierhofer, W. (2002). Speech acts and space(s): language pragmatics and the discursive constitution of the social. In Environment and Planning A, vol.34, pp 1355-1372.

Contributors

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