Page 27 - Critical and Cultural Theory

LANGUAGE AND INTERPRETATION
Is it possible to draw a clear line between factual and non-
factual language, science and nonscience? Logical Positivism
thought that it was: theories are legitimate if they can be classified
as scientific. The Tractatus follows this approach in arguing that
philosophical statements are nonscientific and therefore unreliable.
However, it also states that this does not imply that nonscience
should be condemned - rather, it means that it cannot be
adequately articulated through language. Wittgenstein states: 'The
whole sense of the book might be summed up in the following
words: what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we
cannot talk about we must pass over in silence' (Wittgenstein
1975: 6.53). This leads to a paradox: truly important things must
remain unsaid, yet one must be able to convey their importance by
not talking about them.
The sayable and the unsayable also impinge on the question of
the self. The knowing self sees the world but cannot see itself
seeing it: I can say 'I see a blue tiger' but cannot see the T that
sees the blue tiger. Analogously, when I look in a mirror, I can see
my eyes but cannot see the T that sees them. There is no I, ego or
subject able to confer meaning to what it sees and thinks. T is a
linguistic point of reference, not a personal possession.
Establishing the conditions for the existence of a precisely mean-
ingful language is an arduous task. The grammatical correctness of
a sentence is no reliable guarantee: an utterance may be correctly
shaped, yet illogical. This is documented in How To Do Things
With Words by J. L. Austin (1911-60), the founder of Speech-Act
Theory. Austin argues that in order to be meaningful, sentences
must fulfil certain 'happiness conditions': they must refer to some-
thing/someone that really exists, must be honest and must be
consistent (Austin 1962). However, these conditions are not guar-
anteed by grammatical correctness. Properly structured sentences
can be meaningless if they fail due to lack of reference ('John's
children are bald but John has no children'); dishonesty ('I say
"I'll be there" but have no intention of being there'); or inconsis-
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tency ('I say "I welcome you" but then treat you as an intruder') .
In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein seems to be saying that meaning-
ful propositions are scientific and well-formed and that meaning-

4 •*" The relationship between grammar and logic is also addressed in Part III,
Chapter 3, 'Rhetoric'.

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