Extending the Private Language Argument

The paper poses the question of how the use of external artifacts contributes to the stabilization of meaning and thought. On the basis of the private language argument and the problem of objective meaning, I argue that Wittgenstein’s considerations regarding meaning-making should be sensitive to how materiality bears on the interactions with semiotic artifacts produced in speech and writing. The distributed language perspective and the concept of languaging (Cowley 2011, 2007; Steffensen 2011) is then linked to a metacognitive theory of writing (Goody 1977; Olson 1994, 2016) to clarify how social and material settings contribute to the lived experience and metalinguistic awareness that is essential to meaning-making. It is argued that, if material characteristics of symbolizations change metalinguistic awareness, the interpretation of the private language argument partly depends on the types of external artifacts the private linguist is allowed to exploit. The frameworks of distributed language and the theory of writing thus shed new light on the private language argument by making it even more radical than has previously been assumed.