ABSTRACT
Language should begin, ideally, with a separate word for each separate fact, and then proceed to deal with the relations between the facts. Language is at its simplest when it corresponds to simple experiences the most people have in common. From there on, it can be extended to evoke experiences that are less common. The most straightforward way in which ‘new language’ makes its appearance is when a ‘new object’ requires a name. The ‘new object’ may be genuinely new – a new chemical element, a new species of microbe. The school of linguistic philosophy – whose key figures are Wittgenstein and J. L. Austin – has recognised the inadequacy of ‘everyday language,’ which is like a machine in which all the parts are loose. The linguistic philosophers are inclined to accuse existentialism of a systematic misuse of language. Existentialism is always preoccupied with a sense of the inadequacy of language.
