Abstract

We may reflect on language in different ways. There is the way familiar to analytical philosophers. That may take different forms, but most of them are strikingly different from the way of someone like Elias Canetti or F. R. Leavis, whose thought is shaped by their concern with literature. In the latter case language appears as an essentially human phenomenon, not because it is limited to the species Homo sapiens, but because it is essentially connected with the culture and histories of peoples, whose plurality is underdetermined by any elaboration on the nature and environmental conditions of Homo sapiens. It is rare to find analytical philosophers of language for whom that is important or who have tried even to sketch the kind of importance it may have. That is because they assume that it is not important to language as such but only to the sophisticated use of language in poetry or literature. They have tended to misunderstand the sense in which a language such as English is a natural language.