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linguistic turn

linguistic turn noun: the shift which occurred in philosophical attention, during the 20th century and within a number of philosophical schools of thought, from traditional themes of metaphysics and epistemology to a focus on the structure and usage of language and the relation of language to human understanding of those traditional themes.

Noun

linguistic turn

  1. The shift which occurred in philosophical attention, during the 20th century and within a number of philosophical schools of thought, from traditional themes of metaphysics and epistemology to a focus on the structure and usage of language and the relation of language to human understanding of those traditional themes.
    • Philosophy during the first half of the century has taken the linguistic turn. Words are used either philosophically or commonsensically. Philosophical uses are literally unintelligible. The task is to explicate them by talking commonsensically about them. This is the fundamental idea of the turn.1961, Gustav Bergmann, “Physics and Ontology”, in Philosophy of Science, volume 28, number 1, page 2
    • The so-called linguistic turn. . . involved moving away from foundationalist assumptions of the primacy of logic and towards a more subtle recognition of the varied nature of language and of its deep influence, its pervasive implications across the range of human practices.2004, Paul Standish, “Europe, Continental Philosophy and the Philosophy of Education”, in Comparative Education, volume 40, number 4, page 490

Origin of linguistic turn

Popularized by Richard Rorty in The Linguistic Turn (1967).

Questions about linguistic turn

What does linguistic turn mean?
Linguistic turn means the shift which occurred in philosophical attention, during the 20th century and within a number of philosophical schools of thought, from traditional themes of metaphysics and epistemology to a focus on the structure and usage of language and the relation of language to human understanding of those traditional themes.
What part of speech is linguistic turn?
Linguistic turn is a noun.

Words near linguistic turn in the dictionary

  1. linguistic landscape
  2. linguistic landscapes
  3. linguistic map
  4. linguistic terrain
  5. linguistic terrains
  6. linguistic turn
  7. linguistic unit
  8. linguistic units
  9. linguistical
  10. linguistically
  11. linguistician

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: linguistic turn (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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