The world does not speak. Only we do.

 For Rorty, language is not merely a medium between the self and reality. Language has, rather, a constitutive role in thought: it determines the way we think. 

The availability of particular words or a specific grammar, for instance, sets how we think about reality. And language use is ubiquitous. We cannot access reality without it. That means we can’t know if the language we use accurately represents the world. 

To use Hilary Putnam’s expression, we cannot step outside language to see the world from ‘a God’s-eye point of view’. In this sense, our language is contingent: we use a certain language for accidental reasons, and not necessarily because that’s the way the world works. After all, as Rorty said ten years later in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, “the world does not speak. Only we do”