On the Forms and Functions of Linguistic Rules

Abstract

In this paper, I develop and defend an account of the forms and functions of linguistic rules that builds on the work of David K. Lewis and Ludwig Wittgenstein. I show that the essential differences between Lewis’s and Wittgenstein’s accounts of the forms of linguistic rules are due to the different functions of linguistic rules these accounts are meant to explain: Wittgenstein’s procedures for handling expressions originally establish the reference of terms in local “language-games” and thereby make them suitable instruments for guiding and structuring individual human activities. Lewis’s conventions of truthfulness and trust make it possible to integrate all particular local language-games into global languages, which serve as instruments for the coordination of all possible particular human activities into lives and cultures . I argue that each account fails to accommodate precisely the function of linguistic rules that the other is able to capture and that, accordingly, only in concert do these two kinds of rules make language the instrument we know and need.