The philosophy of the ordinary language (sometimes also called linguistic philosophy ) was current in the analytical Philosophie which claimed to avoid the philosophical “theories”, excesses of formalism to give more attention to the uses and the practices of the ordinary language and common direction.

The current was especially inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein, in particular in its evolution after the Tractatus logico-philosophicus towards what one called his “second philosophy”. Although Wittgenstein taught with Cambridge, it is especially with Oxford with Gilbert Ryle (1900-1976), J.L. Austin (1911-1960), P.F. Strawson (1919-2006), Paul Grice (1913-1988) and John Wisdom (1904-1993) that the movement developed.

History

The return to the ordinary language is a reaction with regard to the origins of the analytical philosophy, which one sometimes called the “philosophy of the ideal language”. For authors like Bertrand Russell, Gottlob Frege, Rudolf Carnap or even Willard Van Orman Quine, the ordinary language confused, simplistic, is filled of errors and must be corrected in a more rigorous formal version and without ambiguity, in accordance with the contemporary Logique.

For Wittgenstein, on the contrary, such as it approaches the thing in its teaching of the years 1930 and the Philosophische Untersuchungen (appeared in manner posthumous in 1953), there is nothing to correct in the ordinary language, which is made many different uses, plays of language to the rules adapted to various circumstances. To start from this ordinary language makes it possible to dissolve philosophical problems which are generated by the language of philosophy.

The current, which was dominating in the analytical Philosophie of the years 1950, especially in the United Kingdom, declined but certain theses of these philosophers, in particular of J.L. Austin or of Paul Grice, had a greatter importance in Linguistique and especially in Pragmatique.