Abstract

When Wittgenstein introduces the notion of family resemblance in the PI, he claims that family expressions like ‘games’ are applied to things in a very particular way. Speakers do not point to some characteristics found in all games, but, instead, call a thing ‘game’ because it shares some characteristics with some other things already called ‘game’. Contextualists like Charles Travis argue that this supports a contextual theory of meaning. According to Travis, when speakers point to different characteristics for calling some thing ‘game’, the meaning of ‘game’ varies in relation to the context it is used in (in relation to the different criteria used in different contexts). I argue against this interpretation. To do so, I introduce a distinction between the static meaning of a family expression at a fixed point in time and the dynamic extension of its meaning over time. The context of utterance is only relevant for the latter and not, like Travis needs to claim, for the former.