What Game Are We Playing?

Being on a first name basis with a bartender is a big deal. A bartender named Andrea in Indiana told my friend Jake her name one night. I guess Jake seemed like a nice guy to Andrea, which is fair, because Jake is a nice guy. However, Jake started using her name too much.

"Heyyyy Andrea!"

"Andrea, have you met my friend Stewart?"

"I'd love another Gin martini, Andrea!" (Jake doesn't drink Gin martinis. But, it sounds a bit more interesting than a Bud Light.)

Finally, Andrea responded, "Don't abuse the name!" Jake, being in a crowded college bar, misheard and yelled, "What game are we playing?!" I'm sure the alcohol did not have any part in the mixup. However, Jake had no idea that he was, at once, sorely mistaken and intimately correct. If the game was "Playful Banter with a Bartender", Jake got a yellow card. But, if Jake did not know what game he was playing or what the rules were, how could he be at fault? I suppose his biggest misunderstanding came when he told me that story. What Jake intended as a funny bar story I, who have never played "Playful Banter with a Bartender", took as an introduction to Wittgenstein's language-games.

About a century ago, a man named Ludwig Wittgenstein (Vick-ten-stein) wrote a book called Philosophical Investigations. Here, he stripped down language to its most basic roots. Builder A says "Block" to assistant B to; B then brings A a block. For Wittgenstein, this is an example of a primitive language, yet this language tells us much about our own us of words. It is not simply enough for assistant B to recognize that "Block" corresponds to a real block in the world. This is important, but B must also know what actions are meant from A's utterance of "Block." B must grow up in a world where he is taught what verbal words correspond to and the proper actions which accompany those words. In short, A & B must know what game they are playing. Should B misunderstand "Block" to correspond with "Spear" and throw rather than hand the "Spear" to A, then A is in danger of getting killed by a spear. It is important to know what game you're playing.

Wittgenstein's later project concerns language-games. "For a large class of cases of the employment of the word 'meaning' - though not for all - this word can be explained in this way: the meaning of a word is its use in the language" (PI 43). His project concerned the everyday usage of words within their context or language-game. So, if I say, "It is going to rain today," the meaning varies if I am giving (1) a report, (2) a prediction, (3) telling a story. In this example, we see that the language-games we employ are not simply as broad as English, French, Mandarin. There are games upon games all concerning real uses in the world. So, the meaning of a joke does not correspond to the way it would as a report, and that is permissible. No yellow card for that. But, it is important that every person involved in a language-game (what Wittgenstein calls a 'form of life') knows what game is being played. Context is king!

Though meaning goes far deeper than use, use is not a bad place to start. Most of you may have once responded, "You too!" when a waiter said, "Enjoy your meal!" We can get in word-ruts of standard responses without any closer idea of what game we're playing. For the next few days, I'm going to write about some of the games we play and some of the common fouls we commit. That is, in essence, what I attempted to do on a previous essay. As I talk about the game of music, the game of politics, and others, I hope to bring clarity, both to my world and hopefully to your world.

-HGM