ABSTRACT
Locke's account of the function of language in communication is much like Hobbes':
Men learn Names, and use them in Talk with others, only that they may be understood: which is then done, when by Use or Consent, the Sound I make by the Organs of Speech, excites in another Man's Mind, who hears it, the Idea I apply it to in mine, when I speak it. IDS
The model may seem to be no more than a corollary of the traditional doctrine of concepts and terms, yet Locke saw it as a potentially radical thesis, a weapon to be employed against two traditional errors. The first is the assumption that the words in a language mean the same for all those who speak it: the assumption of those who
think it enough, that they use a Word, as they imagine, in the common Acceptation of that Language; in which case they suppose, that the I dea, they make it a Sign of, is precisely the same, to which the Understanding Men of that Country apply that Name.r"
The second error is the assumption which many make that they talk of 'Things as really they are': i.e. that, as well as standing for ideas, 'their Words stand also for the reality of Things' .107 By this Locke meant the assumption that words get their meaning directly by naming things as they are in themselves, unmediated by ideas, or things as we conceive of them.
