5.The Grammar of Language

                                                                 In Philosophy, we are interested in 'depth grammar' and not in the 'surface grammar' of language. The latter we learn in school grammar classes and is about the syntax of language and the rules of sentence formation. The former is employed in "language-games" and like any game we play, language-games too have rules and deals with the semantics of language.These rules are not strict boundaries, but overlapping and fluid ones. "Rule" and "agreement" are related to one another like cousins. Similarly, the uses of "rule" and that of "same" are interwoven as in the use of "proposition" and the use of "true". The tendency to create an ideal language is fraught with danger and unnecessary as our ordinary language is perfectly in order as it is for our use. This truth unsettled philosophers like Gottloeb Frege and Bertrand Russell who were his mentors and were forced to revise their positions. The consequence of this insight was that his own "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" and the "Principia Mathematica" of Bertrand Russell fell by the wayside. "The Philosophy of Common Sense" of G.E. Moore ( another professor of his at Cambridge) had to beat a fast retreat on epistemological grounds. The "depth grammar" of our language governs our use of words and to look for a "perfect" and "idealistic" use of words is nothing but a mirage.
                                                  In search of meaning of words, the context of each speaker's description of his or her 'meaning' of some expression reveals 'depth grammar'. Wittgenstein investigates 'meaning' from different directions through concepts of 'family resemblances' of 'meaning', 'understanding', 'thinking', 'intending' and similar concepts. "When we mean something, it is like going up to someone...we go up to the ting we mean." (P I., para., 455). This is how the concept 'intentionality' is used that is crucial in understanding how language is connected to reality. When a person actually uses words, depth grammar reveals whatever it is that accompanies those words. 'Meaning' encompasses the subjective-human aspects and pin-pointing meaning at the same time brings out the 'deep meaning' enmeshed in the 'depth grammar'. We refer to the surrounding circumstances and relationships that accompany our language use through depth grammar. It is rooted in a whole set of activities into which language is woven derived from 'forms of life'of the subject or the subjects involved. The connection between 'doing' and 'meaning'constitutes language-games.
                                                 Depth grammar only describes and in no way explains the use of signs (P.I., 496). The rules described by grammar are not rooted in anything logical, psychological and Metaphysical. They are embedded in human ways of living and are flexible and possible to be modified. Thus they may be called 'arbitrary' (P.I., para., 497).  Meaning is linked with 'doing' as against 'things' or 'objects'.Understanding is not a mental state or process. The logic {grammar} of understanding and that of mental states belongs to two different language-games. (P. I., para, 34) .

4. Games and Language-Games

                                                                        Language-games are understood in comparison with the games we usually play; indoor games, outdoor games; card games, board games, field games and all sorts of sports on land and in water etc. Is there any one thing that is common in the games we play the absence of which will edge anyone of the games out? It would seem that there must be something common in all of them in order to merit the name 'game' for them.This is the consequence of our 'thinking' without 'looking'. The importance of 'observation' and 'seeing' should not be diminished by our 'thinking'. Instead of any one thing common to all games, and this applies to language-games as well, similarities and family relationships should serve as reasons for bringing them under the tag of games and language-games. This is what we do in every day use of language and no one has any complaint about 'inexactness' in our use of words. If anyone has a complaint, he or she owes us a definition of 'exactness'!
                                                                      Our idea of perfection and exactness in thinking is the result of a particular kind of picture that holds us captive, although in our ordinary use of language as against the philosophical one, we are not bothered about it. It occurs because the form of our language seems to suggest exactness and we could not get out of it because it lay in our language. "When philosophers use a word -'knowledge', 'object', 'I', 'proposition', 'name' - and try to grasp the 'essence' of the thing, one must always ask oneself: is the word ever actually used in this way in the language-game which is its original home? -        "What 'we' do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use". (Wittgenstein, P.I., para., 116). Does it mean that Wittgenstein wanted to abolish all Metaphysics? Scarcely! He was aiming his ire against the metaphysical doctrines of empiricists like David Hume and John Locke as well as the rationalists like Rene Descartes and Immanuel Kant. What Wittgenstein was against was the tendency to use words without clear meanings and consider the confusion and misunderstandings caused therein as the result of deep thinking in philosophy and especially in Metaphysics. Metaphysics treats about subjects like the nature of being, consciousness, freedom, ethical and moral values, topics related to religion etc., that is clearly beyond the scope of Physics and other empirical sciences. All these subjects have their own language-games just like the empirical sciences where one type of language-game cannot sit in judgment over others.  
                                                                  "What we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stand" (Wittgenstein, P. I., Para., 118). The importance of our ordinary and everyday language is clear from the fact that we have no way to reconstruct it, if it is too coarse and material in the first place, for it needs to be used for any attempt to reconstruct it. Meaning is not something other than the word we use and it consists in the use we make of it without recourse to a third item like an image or idea. "One might think: if philosophy speaks of the word 'philosophy' there might be a second - order philosophy. But it is not so: it is, rather, like the case of orthography, which deals with the word 'orthography' among others without then being second - order" (Wittgenstein, P. I., Para., 121). It is within language-games that words are used when we use language and their meaning consists in the use made in particular language-games according to rules of language use. These rules are called grammatical rules, which are not rules for syntax that we learn in grammar classes that are presupposed in ordinary use of languge and are known as "surface grammar" for our purposes. The rules we are talking about in our investigaions is called "depth grammar" and deal with semantics concerning meaning of words and sentences.