Wittgenstein did not define the concept of Usage, but he shows in-stead, very well, his conception of use of words, through his activity of creating examples of applications of the words in different situations – from standard to non-standard ones and even nonsensical applications.
That activity may be interpreted according to two distinct aspects:
Oliveira, Paulo; Pichler, Alois; Moreno, Arley (guest eds.).
Wittgenstein in/on Translation, Coleção CLE, p. 33-48. v. 86, 2019
a) The activity of giving/creating examples aims at obtaining a pano-ramic view of the senses.
b) The activity of describing techniques of teaching and learning to talk, which are more or less elementary – such as training (Abrichtung) by ostensively associating objects and sounds – and to grasp the func-tion and meaning of words – by ostensive explanafunc-tions (Erklärung) or by definitions (PI, § 6). That activity led Wittgenstein to describe the construction of somewhat elementary linguistic tools – such as tags, paradigms, samples – applied as norms, or rules of sense.
My point concerns the second aspect: these techniques could also be applied to the construction of signs, with the aim of showing the process of construction of these elementary norms or rules of sense. Thus, one can perform the analysis of a very general and elementary relation supposed by the use of words as signs, which I would like to call symbolic addressing – i.e., the evoking movement of something B from A. My interest here is limited to the construction of linguistic signs, and it is not directly con-cerned with other forms of symbolic non-linguistic instruments.
1.1.First problem
The sign presents two aspects: a physical one and a symbolical one, and this raises the question of understanding the symbolic process of incorporation of the physical aspect. E.g., to what extent physical ele-ments can give rise to other physical eleele-ments that have a new form, a meaning, when they are combined – as it happens when one passes from phonemes – i.e., a set of physical vocal articulations and physical vocalic points of production – to meaningful vocal sequences as the monemes and words.
My reply is that the first set of physical elements already has a form inside a certain context of forms: i.e., recurrent sets of production and artic-ulation of sounds that can be expressed in accordance to certain rules, phonological and perceptual ones.
Oliveira, Paulo; Pichler, Alois; Moreno, Arley (guest eds.).
Wittgenstein in/on Translation, Coleção CLE, p. 33-48. v. 86, 2019
1.2.Second problem
What is the nature of these recurrent sets of actions, that one can ex-press as “rules” which give rise to contexts inside which are created symbolic forms? How does one pass from physical actions to meaning?
My reply is that these actions play the role of norms according to the interest we attach to them in our current life: by their repetition, they may become criteria to recognize certain vocalizations and to distinguish them from the others, regardless certain immediate communicative and expressive goals.
Actually, that elementary normative and criterial function is already one of the first steps that mark the detachment of behaviour concerning its empirical contents. The behaviour becomes an action by expressing a norm or criterion as a principle for organizing the contents of experi-ence.
That process allows the rise of what I call “context of forms”, i.e., sets of actions whose function become relatively autonomous concern-ing their origin. The same process is in play for the construction and perception of symbolic tools. Recurrent actions become rules, and per-ception is organised according to these rules – as when we spontaneously articulate the vocal apparatus to produce phonemes in speaking a certain language, and also when we spontaneously perceive “good forms”, and not only sequences of stimuli, when looking at a sequence of points. In both cases, the rise of the normative function is the basis for the symbol-ic incorporation of empirsymbol-ical contents of experience – and consequently also for the learning of norms inside a context of forms – i.e., of other norms.
In other words, these sets of actions may be conceived as instructions (Unterricht), or rules to which one attributes the criterial function of norms of perception, action, and reaction, in order to discriminate shapes, positions, weights, colours, and then combining all these distinc-tions among them to achieve different goals. When behaviour becomes an instruction, i.e., an action – e.g., when perceptual behaviour becomes a perceptual norm to distinguish forms, shapes or colours – one passes from the empirical level to the symbolic one. That marks the passage
Oliveira, Paulo; Pichler, Alois; Moreno, Arley (guest eds.).
Wittgenstein in/on Translation, Coleção CLE, p. 33-48. v. 86, 2019
from the reflex behaviour to the operant behaviour – in our terms, the passage from the reflex behaviour to the operant reaction and action.
It is important to observe that the rules are created and developed during the process of constructing symbolic forms itself, i.e. the rules are not a priori. As in the case of perception, action and reaction are interwo-ven with the practice of these activities, which are themselves the source of their own norms. Afterwards, as a consequence, the activities may be directed to achieve several and different goals.
1.3.Third problem
It seems to me that the rise of the linguistic sign helps to show the conditions of possibility for the symbolic assimilation of empirical mate-rial, through the analysis of the elementary relation of symbolic addressing.
In other words, that is a great philosophical question dealt with in terms of a modest linguistic situation: the correlation between the terms of the sign, the significant and the signifier, considered inside the pragmatic context of use of language may show the traditional – philosophically mysterious – relationship between body and mind, or extension and thought, without any mystery.
1.4.Some perspectives
The symbolic addressing is an intuitive relation – between at least two el-ements – that we generally take for granted, without deeper analysis. I consider it important to analyse this relation as a correlation between two general functions that are reciprocally constituted: the significant function and the signifier function – or, on the second case, widely speaking, the ad-dressed content function, to distinguish it from the semantical reference or designation (Bezeichnung). Each function is the symmetrical opposite of the other: respectively, to evoke abstractly some content for thought, and to be the content of a thought abstractly evoked. Any fragment of our experience can play the evocative function, according to certain condi-tions, and, reversely, any fragment of our experience can play the evoked content function. In both cases, the same fragment of experience can play these functions alternatively – e.g., that pencil is evoked by the word
Oliveira, Paulo; Pichler, Alois; Moreno, Arley (guest eds.).
Wittgenstein in/on Translation, Coleção CLE, p. 33-48. v. 86, 2019
“pencil” and can evoke the work of a writer, or the operation of addition is evoked by the arithmetical sign “+” and can evoke the behaviour of collecting things.
The function played in each case is always relative to the other, and that correlation is constitutive of each one. To each signifier corresponds at least one addressed content, and vice versa. If that correlation were ab-sent, there wouldn’t be any symbolic addressing, and the fragments of experience would be mere physical ones, thus not playing the symbolic function.
On the other hand, the symbolic correlation presents several different levels of complexity, from the simpler substitution of a content by a signifier to a more complex conceptual addressing of meaning. The first case is comparable to pasting a tag on an object, where the substitution of the object by the tag doesn’t lead to addressed properties of the object – in that case, we can appreciate the zero level of the symbolic addressing played by the words. Like a tag on the object, a proper name is pasted on the individual and doesn’t evoke any property – unlike the concepts, whose addressed content are properties of the object it abstractly evokes.
That elementary level of symbolic addressing should allow us to clear-ly perceive the minimal conditions which are in play in the constitutive correlation between the two functions, the signifier and the addressed content. I will consider that elementary level in the pragmatic domain where language is interrelated with persons, situations of interlocution, actions, empirical objects, facts, mental states, etc. – briefly, what Witt-genstein has called the “language games”. It should be possible to appre-ciate more elementary forms of epistemic activity in turning our atten-tion to the elaboraatten-tion and applicaatten-tion of norms in the pragmatic context of use of language.
2. Re-elaboration of a Wittgensteinian heritage