Criticizing Language

In this paper, I consider a number of philosophical critiques of language and describe how their criticisms compare. In particular, I discuss how the current trend in the philosophy of language known as conceptual engineering fits into this tradition and to what extent it can be considered a critique of language per se, rather than a method of addressing dissatisfactions with certain individual terms. I suggest that criticisms can be divided allegations of two types of shortcoming: dangers and deficiencies. In the category of dangers, I consider some well-known examples from the history of philosophy, and suggest that they partly rely on an unexpressed from of Linguistic Determinism. I then move on to the deficiencies highlighted in the critiques offered by Wittgenstein in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, and Mauthner in his Contributions to a Critique of Language. These form a pair of apparently opposite ways of considering the flaws in language, but I shall argue that they have much in common. I then describe the conceptual engineering movement and its mission to provide ‘improved’ meanings of certain terms. I show that implicit in the assumptions behind conceptual engineering are criticisms of language of both varieties – current meanings are seen as dangerous as they represent a threat to social justice, and the system of allocation of meaning is seen as flawed and in need of external intervention.