The appeal to ordinary language

Abstract

Belief in the philosophic efficacy of ordinary language is a recurrent habit in British Philosophy, and can be regarded, according to taste, as a redeeming virtue or a besetting vice. The reference to ‘Standard English’ comes from the introduction to a recent réchauffé of essays on this theme, and suggests the passing remark that many writers who have descanted upon it, there and elsewhere, seem to take little account of the existence of other languages whose structure and idiom are very different from English (Standard or otherwise), but which seem to be equally, if not more, capable of engendering metaphysical confusion. Though little or nothing has been done to verify this empirically, writers who appeal to Standard English display a surprising confidence and authority in pronouncing upon the proper, normal, literal, primary, true, correct, or dominant meanings of words and phrases.