Utterance types function as rule-governed language games

Evidence

Wittgenstein, taking up the study of language again from scratch, focuses his attention on the effects of different modes of discourse; he calls the various types of utterances he identifies along the way (a few of which I have listed)anguage games.32Whathemeansbythisterm that each of the various categories of utterance can be defined in terms of rules specifying their properties and the uses to which they can be put—in exactly the same way as the game of chess is defined by a set of rules determining the properties of each of the pieces, in other words, the proper way to move them. — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, 139

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core definition of ‘language game’ as rules defining utterance properties, likened to chess.
• XREF: This is the primary conceptual ancestor Jameson’s postmodernism critique must confront. — connects to: Conversation shifts freely among language games while institutions filter them — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on…, 178; Grammar is the set of rules enabling participation in a language game. — Philip Chase Bobbitt, Reflections Inspired by My Critics, 446; Saying anything requires a contingent positional wager inside language (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Grammar is the set of rules enabling participation in a language game. #expands (0.88) — Philip Chase Bobbitt, Reflections Inspired by My Critics, 446
• Conversation shifts freely among language games while institutions filter them #expands (0.85) — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, 178
• Narrative and scientific knowledge are incommensurable language games with no common criterion #exemplifies (0.85) — Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition, 232
• Heterogeneous language games yield only patchy, local institutional determinism. #qualifies (0.82) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 331
• Saying anything requires a contingent positional wager inside language #expands (0.80)
• Conventions and constraints reduce ambiguity the way language constraints reduce garbles #expands (0.75) — Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 680
• Functional language serves to coordinate and subordinate society #expands (0.72) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 404