Ludwig Wittgenstein, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
The grocer receives a slip of paper with "six apples" written on it. He compares the word "apple" with labels on his shelves, finds the matching label, counts from one to six, and places a fruit in the bag for each number counted.1 That is a language-game. Not an example of one — the thing itself. What I call language-games are ways of using signs simpler than those in which we use the signs of our highly complicated everyday language.2
A child begins to make use of words through precisely such forms.3 And I call the whole — language and the activities into which it is woven — a language-game.4 The brake-lever is perhaps the sharpest image for what this means. "I set the brake up by connecting up rod and lever" — yes, but only given the whole of the rest of the mechanism. Separated from its support it is not even a lever; it may be anything, or nothing.5
A word is like that. The ostensive teaching of a word — pointing at a stone and saying its name — effects an understanding only together with a particular kind of instruction. With different instruction, the same ostensive teaching would have effected a quite different understanding.6 Now, what makes this line of investigation difficult to take is the craving for generality — the tendency to look for something in common to all the entities we subsume under a general term.
We are inclined to think there must be something in common to all games, and that this common property is the justification for applying the word "game" to them. But games form a family, the members of which have family likenesses: the same nose in some, the same eyebrows in others, the same way of walking in others still — and these likenesses overlap.7
Understanding a game does not require being able to recite its rules. The criterion is that one can play it — that one does in fact play it, even if baffled when asked for the rules. Games are learned without their rules being codified, and sometimes without a single rule being formulated.8 Grammar itself does not come into existence until the language has already been spoken by human beings for a long time.9 So when you ask what a language-game is — you are already inside one.
The words 'six apples' are written on a bit of paper, the paper is handed to the grocer, the grocer compares the word 'apple' with labels on different shelves. He finds it to agree with one of the labels, counts from 1 to the number written on the slip of paper, and for every number counted takes a fruit off the shelf and puts it in a bag.The Blue and Brown Books, p. 37
Language games are the forms of language with which a child begins to make use of words. The study of language games is the study of primitive forms of language or primitive languages.The Blue and Brown Books, p. 37
Language games are the forms of language with which a child begins to make use of words.The Blue and Brown Books, p. 37
I shall also call the whole, consisting of language and the activities into which it is woven, a 'language-game'.Philosophical Investigations, p. 33
'I set the brake up by connecting up rod and lever.'—Yes, given the whole of the rest of the mechanism. Only in conjunction with that is it a brake-lever, and separated from its support it is not even a lever; it may be anything, or nothing.Philosophical Investigations, pp. 11–12
But if this is the effect of the ostensive teaching, am I to say that it effects an understanding of the word?... With different instruction the same ostensive teaching of these words would have effected a quite different understanding.Philosophical Investigations, p. 33
We are inclined to think that there must be something in common to all games, say, and that this common property is the justification for applying the general term 'game' to the various games; whereas games form a family the members of which have family likenesses. Some of them have the same nose, the others the same eyebrows and others again the same way of walking; and these likenesses overlap.The Blue and Brown Books, p. 37
Isn't it also a criterion that he can play the game, i.e. that he does in fact play it, even if he's baffled when asked for the rules?... there's certainly such a thing as learning the game without explicit rules.Philosophical Grammar, pp. 63–64
The grammar of a language isn't recorded and doesn't come into existence until the language has already been spoken by human beings for a long time. Similarly, primitive games are played without their rules being codified, and even without a single rule being formulated.Philosophical Grammar, pp. 63–64