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14 DON’T ASK, LOOK!
‘wishing’. 11 I believe that this result is due to a bias effect. There is a powerful ideology of
hope. People seem to think that hope should be for something important, where ‘important’
may be read subjectively as ‘something one attaches great importance to’ or objectively as
‘something that is worth attaching great importance to’. But that is not the way the word is in
fact used. It is also used in cases of tepid hope and hope for trivial things. Thus, the use of the
word in unprompted contexts does not seem to bear out the tendency that is evident in the
questionnaire.
5. On the Advisability of Using Corpora
Do all of us, then, have to do Computerised Ordinary Language Philosophy? In the beginning
I have said no. But the answer is rather yes and no.
No, because the method is not suitable for addressing all philosophical questions. I do not
believe that all philosophical issues can be reduced to questions that can be answered by conceptual
analysis. And even if we could narrow it all down to conceptual analysis, this would
not imply that it is paramount to consider ordinary language.
We must also observe that analysing the use of a word field or a word family with the help of a
linguistic text corpus is a lot of work; this work should be undertaken only if it promises
worthwhile results.
On the other hand, the answer to the question whether all of us have to do Computerised
Ordinary Language Philosophy is: yes, at least those of us who claim that ordinary language is
important. Wittgenstein famously warned:
Eine Hauptursache philosophischer Krankheiten – einseitige Diät: man nährt sein Denken
mit nur einer Art von Beispielen. [A main cause of philosophical disease—a onesided
diet: one nourishes one’s thinking with only one kind of example.] (PU 593/PI
593) 12
Relying on one’s own intuition in linguistic analyses is very likely to result in such a one-sided
diet. One way to make the diet more balanced is to avoid making up examples of how language
allegedly is used and to confront oneself with language as it is used in fact. But if the
importance of the actual use of ordinary language is stressed in this way, the use of linguistic
corpora is hardly avoidable.
Roland Bluhm
Technische Universität Dortmund
Roland.Bluhm@tu-dortmund.de
References
Bergenholtz, H., and B. Schaeder 1985: ‘Deskriptive Lexikographie’, in L. Zgusta (ed.): Probleme
des Wörterbuchs, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 277–319.
Bergh, G., and E. Zanchetta 2008: ‘Web Linguistics’, in A. Lüdeling and M. Kytö (eds.) 2008–
2009, Vol. 1: 309–327.
Bluhm, R. 2012: Selbsttäuscherische Hoffnung, Münster: mentis.
11
Cf. Bruininks and Malle 2008: 348f.
12
The title of this paper is, of course, also an allusion to Wittgenstein. In this case, to his famous injunction
“Wie gesagt: denk nicht, sondern schau! [To repeat: don’t think, but look!]” (PU 66/PI 66).