Von den "Luftgebäuden" der Philosophie in der Stadt der Sprache: An Analysis of the Metaphors in the First Part of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations

The present study has as its object three of the most frequent and representative metaphors of the first part(paragraphs from 1 to 133) of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. In particular, the analysisfocuses on the following mappings: LINGUISTIC EXPRESSIONS ARE TOOLS, LANGUAGE IS A CITY andMEANING IS A PURE CRYSTAL. The methodological approach adopted in the study as well as the analyticalproceedings are both borrowed from the theory of conceptual metaphor (see: Lakoff and Johnson 1980, Lakoff1993 and Kövecses 2002, 2020). The three metaphors were identified through a careful manual search of the text.An automatic search for source domain vocabulary followed to identify any further instances of the metaphors.In a second step, the conceptual structure of the metaphors was outlined; the entailments of the mappings werelisted and interpreted on the backdrop of the arguments developed in Wittgenstein’s work. Finally, a comparisonof the structures of the three conceptual metaphors was made. The analysis revealed the existence of complex andcoherent conceptual mappings motivating the use of the identified metaphorical expressions. The comparisonamong the three metaphors confirmed the hypothesis that the entailments of the first two mappings mentionedabove are all consistent with each other, playing a fundamental role in the comprehension of Wittgenstein’s positionon language and meaning. Conversely, the internal logic of the third metaphor reflects a conception of languagerejected by the philosopher.