The secondary literature on this topic is enormous. The following list is highly selective, and entries are included by meeting at least one of the following criteria: good representative of a standard reading of the argument; influential source, primary or secondary; useful collection of items meeting one or other of the previous two criteria; useful survey; item making recent and significant progress in the understanding and assessment of the argument; source drawn on in the writing of this article; item mentioned in the main text of this article.

• Baker, G.P., 1998, ‘The private language argument’, Language & Communication, 18: 325–56. (Scholar)
• Baker, G.P. & Hacker, P.M.S., 1990, ‘Malcolm on language and rules’, Philosophy, 65: 167–79. (Scholar)
• Boghossian, P.A., 1989, ‘The rule-following considerations’, Mind, 98: 507–49. (Scholar)
• Candlish, S., 1997, ‘Wittgensteins Privatsprachenargumentation’, in Eike von Savigny (ed.), Wittgensteins Philosophische Untersuchungen, Berlin: Akademie Verlag: 143–65. (Scholar)
• Canfield, J.V. (ed.), 1986, The Philosophy of Wittgenstein, Volume 9: The Private Language Argument, New York: Garland. (Scholar)
• ––– (ed.), 1986, The Philosophy of Wittgenstein (Volume 10: Logical Necessity and Rules), New York: Garland. (Scholar)
• –––, 1996, ‘The community view’, The Philosophical Review, 105: 469–88. (Scholar)
• –––, 2001, ‘Private language: the diary case’ Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 79: 377–94. (Scholar)
• Child, W., 2013, ‘Does the Tractatus contain a private language argument?’ in P. Sullivan and M. Potter (eds.), Wittgenstein’sTractatus: History and Interpretation, Oxford: Oxford University Press: 143–169. (Scholar)
• Conant, J., 2004, ‘Why worry about the Tractatus?’, in B. Stocker (ed.), Post-Analytic Tractatus, Aldershot: Ashgate: 167–92. (Scholar)
• Cook, J.W., 1969, ‘Human beings’, in P. Winch, (ed.), Studies in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. (Scholar)
• Crary, A. & Read, R. (eds.), 2000, The New Wittgenstein, London and New York: Routledge. (Scholar)
• Diamond, C. 2000, ‘Does Bismarck Have A Beetle In His Box?: The Private Language Argument in the Tractatus’ in A. Crary & R. Read (eds.) 2000: 272–302. (Scholar)
• Fodor, J., 1975, The Language of Thought, New York: Crowell. (Scholar)
• Fogelin, R.J., 1995., Wittgenstein, London: Routledge, 2nd edition, Ch. XII. (Scholar)
• –––, 1994, Pyrrhonian Reflections on Knowledge and Justification, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Scholar)
• Hacker, P.M.S., 1990, Wittgenstein: Meaning and Mind, Volume 3 of an Analytical Commentary on the Philosophical Investigations, Oxford: Blackwell. (Scholar)
• –––, 2010, ‘Robinson Crusoe Sails Again: The Interpretative Relevance of Wittgenstein’s Nachlass’, in N. Venturhina (ed.), Wittgenstein After His Nachlass, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. (Scholar)
• Hymers, M., 2017, Wittgenstein on Sensation and Perception, London: Routledge. (Scholar)
• Jones, O.R. (ed.), 1971, The Private Language Argument, London: Macmillan. (Scholar)
• Kenny, A., 1966, ‘Cartesian privacy’, in G. Pitcher (ed.), Wittgenstein: The Philosophical Investigations, London: Macmillan, 1968. (Scholar)
• –––, 2005, Wittgenstein, London: Allen Lane, revised edition, Ch. 10. (Scholar)
• Kripke, S., 1982, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language, Oxford: Blackwell. (Scholar)
• Kusch, M., 2006, A sceptical guide to meaning and rules: defending Kripke’s Wittgenstein. Routledge. (Scholar)
• Malcolm, N., 1954, ‘Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations’, The Philosophical Review, 63: 530–59. (Scholar)
• –––, 1989, ‘Wittgenstein on language and rules’, Philosophy, 64: 5–28. (Scholar)
• McDowell, J., 1989, ‘One Strand in the Private Language Argument’, Grazer Philosophische Studien, 33/34: 285–303. (Scholar)
• McGinn, M., 2013, Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Wittgenstein and the Philosophical Investigations, London: Routledge, Chs. 4–5. (Scholar)
• Mulhall, S., 2007, Wittgenstein’s Private Language: Grammar, Nonsense, and Imagination in Philosophical Investigations, §§ 243–315, Oxford: Clarendon Press. (Scholar)
• Nielsen, K.S., 2008, The Evolution of the Private Language Argument, Aldershot: Ashgate. (Scholar)
• Pears, D., 1988, The False Prison (Volume Two), Oxford: Clarendon Press, Chs. 13–15. (Scholar)
• –––, 2006, Paradox and Platitude in Wittgenstein’s Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Ch. 3. (Scholar)
• Rhees, R. (ed.), 1984, Recollections of Wittgenstein, revised edition, New York: Oxford University Press. Originally published as Ludwig Wittgenstein: Personal Recollections, Oxford: Blackwell, 1981. (Scholar)
• Russell, B., 1918, ‘The philosophy of logical atomism’, in The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell (Volume 8: The philosophy of logical atomism and Other Essays 1914–19), London: George Allen and Unwin, 1986. (Scholar)
• Sluga, H., 2004, ‘Wittgenstein and Pyrrhonism’, in W. Sinnott-Armstrong (ed.), Pyrrhonian Skepticism, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 99–117. (Scholar)
• Stern, D.G., 2004, Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: an introduction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Scholar)
• –––, 2007, ‘The uses of Wittgenstein’s beetle: Philosophical Investigations §293 and its interpreters’, in G. Kahane, E., Kanterian, and O. Kuusela (eds.), Wittgenstein and his Interpreters: Essays in Memory of Gordon Baker, Malden: Blackwell: 248–68. (Scholar)
• –––, 2010, ‘Another strand in the private language argument’, in A. Ahmed (ed.), Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations: A Critical Guide, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 178–96. (Scholar)
• –––., 2011, ‘Private language’, in O. Kuusela and M. McGinn (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Wittgenstein, Oxford: Oxford University Press: 333–50. (Scholar)
• Stroud, B., 2000, Meaning, Understanding, and Practice, Oxford: Oxford University Press, Essays 5, 6 and 13. (Scholar)
• Tang, H., 2014, ‘“It is not a something, but not a nothing either” – McDowell on Wittgenstein’, Synthese, 191: 557–67. (Scholar)
• Travis, C., 2001, The Uses of Sense: Wittgenstein’s Philosophy of Language, Oxford: Oxford University Press, Ch. 8. (Scholar)
• Verheggen, C. 2007, ‘The Community View Revisited’, Metaphilosophy, 38: 612–631. (Scholar)
• Winch, P., 1983, ‘Facts and superfacts’, The Philosophical Quarterly, 33: 398–404; revised and reprinted in P. Winch, Trying to Make Sense, Oxford: Blackwell, 1987, 54–63. (Scholar)
• Wittgenstein, L., 1993, Philosophical Occasions, specifically chapter 10, ‘Notes for lectures on “private experience” and “sense-data”’, chapter 11, ‘Notes by R. Rhees, The Language of Sense Data and Private Experience’, and chapter 14, ‘Notes for the “Philosophical Lecture”’, J. Klagge and A. Nordmann (eds.), Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. (Scholar)
• –––, 2009, Philosophical Investigations, translated by G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte, Oxford: Blackwell, Revised 4th edition by P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte. (Scholar)
• Wrisley, G., 2011, ‘Wherefore the Failure of Private Ostension?’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 89:3: 483–498. (Scholar)