Abstract

Early on in the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein lists various examples of the term Sprachspiel. He begins with “commanding and following commands” and ends with “asking a favor, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying,” all familiar ingredients of what we would now call a speech act theory of language. In the middle of this list, however, is an example that has received little attention: “playing theater”.1 With this formulation, Wittgenstein moves away from a focus on games such as chess, which have unduly dominated the discussion of his late philosophy, and toward an expanded notion of play that includes theater.Once one approaches Wittgenstein’s conception of language through the..