ABSTRACT
The nature and role of language has become the contentious focus for so many of the main issues in philosophy, including epistemological ones. Relativists may argue that the idea of 'language-independent reality' is a valid one by holding that reality is produced, constituted or constructed through language, and that therefore one can know reality, but it is not and can never be a language and-thought-independent reality. The idea of action as a phenomenon deeply embedded in the use of ordinary language strongly argues for a view of language as constitutive of the social world. If one is concerned about the nature of the relationship between language, on the one hand, and the external world, on the other, then the naming relationship is likely to be seen to have a key role. Language is a social activity. It is something that developed in and as part of social activities and, reciprocally, social activities are carried on through language.
