Page "Philosophical Investigations" Paragraph 21

Wittgenstein argues that definitions emerge from what he termed " forms of life ", roughly the culture and society in which they are used.

Wittgenstein stresses the social aspects of cognition ; to see how language works for most cases, we have to see how it functions in a specific social situation.

It is this emphasis on becoming attentive to the social backdrop against which language is rendered intelligible that explains Wittgenstein's elliptical comment that " If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.

" However, In proposing the thought experiment involving the fictional character, Robinson Crusoe, a captain shipwrecked on a desolate island with no other inhabitant, Wittgenstein shows that language is not in all cases a social phenomenon ( although, they are for most case ); instead the criterion for a language is grounded in a set of interrelated normative activities: teaching, explanations, techniques and criteria of correctness.

In short, it is essential that a language is shareable, but this does not imply that for a language to function that it is in fact already shared.