ABSTRACT
The Proposition Theory treats sentences and other linguistic items as inert abstract entities whose structure can be studied as if under a microscope. But Ludwig Wittgenstein argued that words and sentences are more like game pieces or tokens, used to make moves in rule-governed conventional social practices. A “meaning” is not an abstract object; meaning is a matter of the role an expression plays in human social behavior. To know the expression’s meaning is just to know how to deploy the expression appropriately in conversational settings.
