CHAPTER 5

Language Use and Language Usage

W
e need to constantly remind ourselves that we need to confront our-
selves, to think for ourselves, and to analyze or clarify what it is that
we are doing and saying; sometimes we even need to analyze and
clarify what we are trying to say. We need to confront issues about the meaning
of our actions and the meaning of our language uses and usages. How do we
go about doing all these things specifically when using language on concrete
levels of application where we speak of language use and language usage in the
different senses of the use of these two expressions? Doing all these things and
understanding what we are doing is a constant analytic juggling act.
One way to do it is to survey what it is that we are doing in using language,
especially making straight what we are doing in clarifying what we are saying.
We need to focus on what it is that we are doing when we use language to fur-
ther our own comprehension of what we think we are saying. And in turn we
need to ask what it is that we are doing in helping others to understand what
we are trying to say.
Such questions underline the importance of interpretation and definition
in furthering any understanding of the meaning of any form or mode of com-
munication, whether it is presentational or stated implicitly, or whether it is said
explicitly through words, or even in some instances whether we are communi-
cating without words. We thus present meaning directly or indirectly in all sorts
of actions and productions both within and without language. Thus, there is in
all this talk about meaning on all levels the appearance of our being enmeshed
in the totality of meaning that is involved in everything we say and do. And
that observation in a way may be correct. Yet, like all high level abstraction, that
observation tends to seem empty.
But let us restrict our discussion here to the meaning of language use and
language usage as a first important step in our discussion of the relevant cor-
relatives that I propose to talk about in trying to communicate what it is rhe-
torically to interpret and to define meaning. In talking about interpreting and
defining, we need as a first step to interpret and define what we are doing to

G. E. Yoos, Politics  Rhetoric

© George E. Yoos 2009
48 O Politics & Rhetoric

ourselves in clarifying (acts of self-clarification) about what we say and do. And the
next step to take is to define and interpret what we are doing and saying to others
(acts facilitating our exchange of meaning); that is, what we are trying to do in
clarifying for them what we want to say to them. We need to know both what it
is that we think we are saying and what others understand us to be saying.
But it ought also to be noted that when we especially talk about “definition”
and “the meaning of a language,” there is a distinct difference between speaking
about use and speaking about usage. It is a fundamental distinction that needs
to be made in talking about language. It is fundamental to our understanding
of the basic differences between interpreting and defining. Understanding the
difference between language use and language usage centers upon the whole
problem of trying to interpret, comprehend, and understand what it is that we
do and say to other people.
The overall question is, “What is it to say and mean something?” An as a
precautionary step, as already suggested, we need to try to escape from many of
the circular problems we encounter in talking about meaning, and to do that
as I have proposed, we need to expand on the meaning of a number of correla-
tive terms that we can bring into the discussion that distinguishes “use” from
“usage.” We need to try to discuss the complexity of issues about the meaning
of this much richer repertoire of use and usage of a number of related and
apparently synonymous and antonymous correlative terms we use to talk about
meaning. We need to expand on them to see if the amplification of the meaning
of these additional contrasting words does not help make better sense of what
we are doing and talking about in talking about language use and language
usage.
Let me initiate this amplification and expansion by first introducing a few
technical definitions that are definitional proposals.
Language use (=df ) is the way we do things with words.

Language use has to do with how we use words to think about our own think-
ing. We need words to think about our use of words in any act of cognition,
identification, or in any act of recognition. We especially need an additional
set of words to further our knowledge of words and our knowledge of their
uses in sentences. We have to ask ourselves what it is to think that something is
knowledge, and then we need to ask ourselves about the differences between the
words that we use and their meanings in terms of our already-settled conven-
tional usages of terms in our language. And we need to ask what part usage has
had in acquiring any knowledge that we have about the world.
Language usage (=df ) is the conventional meanings of the language we speak.