Ordinary language philosophy (OLP, sometimes called linguistic philosophy) is a methodological approach within analytic philosophy which treats many traditional philosophical problems as the result of misunderstandings of how words are ordinarily used. Rather than proposing ideal or artificial languages, ordinary language philosophers investigate the actual use of expressions in everyday contexts, and often argue that once such uses are described carefully, many philosophical "problems" dissolve or change their shape. Grice, while criticising some ordinary language arguments, likewise took careful attention to what we say as a crucial starting point for theorising about meaning and implication.

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Further reading

Primary sources

  • Austin, J. L. How to Do Things with Words, ed. J. O. Urmson and Marina Sbisa. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975.
  • ———. "A Plea for Excuses". In Austin, Philosophical Papers, ed. J. O. Urmson & G. J. Warnock. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961.
  • ———. Sense and Sensibilia, ed. G. J. Warnock. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962.
  • Hanfling, Oswald. Philosophy and Ordinary Language. London: Routledge, 2000.
  • Hart, H. L. A. "The Ascription of Responsibility and Rights". Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1949.
  • Ryle, Gilbert. The Concept of Mind. London: Hutchinson, 1949.
  • ———. Dilemmas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954.
  • Strawson, P. F. Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics. London: Methuen, 1959.
  • ———. "On Referring". Mind 59 (1950): 320–344.
  • John Wisdom. Other Minds. Oxford: Blackwell, 1952.
  • Wittgenstein, Ludwig. The Blue and Brown Books. Oxford: Blackwell, 1958.
  • ———. Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell, 1953.

Secondary sources

  • Passmore, John. A Hundred Years of Philosophy, revised edition. New York: Basic Books, 1966. (See chapter 18, "Wittgenstein and Ordinary Language Philosophy".)
  • Soames, Scott. Philosophical Analysis in the Twentieth Century: Volume Two, The Age of Meaning. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.
  • Forguson, Lynd. "Oxford and the 'Epidemic' of Ordinary Language Philosophy". The Monist 84 (2001): 325–345.
  • Uscchanov, T. P. "The Strange Death of Ordinary Language Philosophy". Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 23 (2002): 73–101.
  • Baz, Avner. When Words Are Called For: A Defense of Ordinary Language Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012.
  • Crary, Alice and Joel de Lara, eds. Ordinary Language Philosophy. Special issue of Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 39, no. 2 (2019).
  • Fischer, Eugen. "Critical Ordinary Language Philosophy: A New Project in Experimental Philosophy". Synthese (2023).
  • Kemerling, Garth. "Analysis of Ordinary Language". The Philosophy Pages, 2011.
  • Kemerling, Garth. "Ludwig Wittgenstein: Analysis of Language". The Philosophy Pages, 2011.
  • Coleman, Anthony and Welty, Iwan, eds. Ordinary Language Philosophy: A Reappraisal. Special issue of Essays in Philosophy, 11, no. 2 (2010).