Language defies a resting place.

 

Analytic philosophy – was a movement which was fascinated by the idea that ‘logic’ or ‘conceptual analysis’ named instruments by which all the rest of culture could be held at arm’s length,

But this was just one more  effort at ‘metaphysics’ or ‘totalisation’ – one more attempt to give the perturbed spirit rest.

It was also bound to be short-lived, for Language is simply not as plausible a candidate for a resting-place.

What Heidegger called ‘the onto-theological tradition’ made it possible to think of ‘Being’ or ‘Mind’ as names for a causal force,  something big and strong enough to put everything else in its place.

But ‘Language’ can't be the locus of causal power. It is not a suitable sobriquet for Omniscience. ‘Language’ is something sprawling, something which dissipates its forces by rambling on. That is why, in the philosophical tradition, language has usually been something to be avoided – sometimes by replacing lots of little words with one big Word, sometimes by concentrating on ‘logic’, envisaged as a sort of concentrated essence of language, all the language the philosopher really needs to know

Pruning the tree of language to get rid of invidious branches with linguistic secateurs does not work, - watch how the tree relentlessly sprouts again. 

Attempt to edit language down cannot succeed, because it is just another version of the onto-theological attempt to give language a Resting-Place, a place that will not defy one as it seeps and you find that you cannot stop this leak.

There is no natural hierarchy of discourses or jargons, no structure topped off by the super-language which gives us a grip on all the others, the words which classify all the other words. There is no privileged language in which to state invidious distinctions between true and false language. There is no linguistic material out of which we can forge clippers with which to snip off unfruitful linguistic suckers.

Source Richard Rorty