Abstract
This paper explores Wittgenstein’s method of language-games, by discussing how simple language-games are related to language of real-life complexity. It is argued that Wittgenstein rejects as unintelligible an atomist conception of this relation, according to which the step from simple language-games to complex language is a matter of mere accumulation of individually self-standing building-blocks which are supposed to remain substantively unchanged throughout the process. The upshot of Wittgenstein’s non-atomism is that his method involves as a crucial element the consideration of how simple language- games themselves undergo transformations when we build up complicated forms of language from rudimentary starting-points. In this connection, it is investigated how the notion of “form of life” enters Wittgenstein’s discussion. It is considered why the connection made between his method and Goethean morphology in Waismann’s The Principles of Linguistic Philosophy is absent in PI, and then argued at some length that a different analogy that he does make use of - that of language as an ancient city - sheds more light on his method than is usually appreciated.
