For Wittgenstein, meaning and truth are not related--at least not directly or primarily--to an external world of "fact" waiting to be apprehended. Instead, they are an internal function of language. Because the meaning of any statement is dependent on the context--that is, on the "language game"--in which it appears, any sentence has as many meanings as contexts in which it is used. Rather than assertions of final truth or truth in any final ultimate sense, all our utterances can only be deemed "true" within the context in which they are spoken. Further, viewing language as a "game" presumes that language does not have its genesis in the individual mind grasping a truth or fact about the world and then expressing it in statements. Rather, language is a social phenomenon, and any statement acquires its meaning within the process of social interaction.
Stanley Grenz and John Franke, Beyond Foundationalism (Louisville, Westminster John Knox, 2001), 42.
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