346 | nº 31, pp. 341-360 | doxa.comunicación
July-December of 2020
The digital ecosystem during the COVID-19 Crisis: new normality and lockdown easing and lifting
ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978
Apart from formal logic, he believes that language does not represent individuals or facts, for this is only one of its uses, but is basically a system of activities insofar as the meaning is linked to what he calls ‘language-games’. And he employs the concept to refer to the different ways of employing linguistic resources linked to different communicative situations inherent to diverse forms of life. In sum, suffice it to distinguish the natural place that terms and propositions occupy to understand their meaning. In his Conocer Wittgenstein y su obra, moreover, Javier Sádaba (1980: 119) explains this in the following terms:
Language-games are the locus of meaning (49, 116, 261). What does this mean? That the relationship between propositions and states of things is now achieved through language-games. They are the state of the art.
This researcher goes on to describe language-games as undefinable, changeable, open and incalculable. Indeed, he states that there are rules, but only as an abstract construct that is necessary for communication, given that they are arbitrary and conventional, while being learnt from the reactions of people to the events that befall them. Lastly, language would be contingent on our needs and interests and its rules would involve a human practice.
1.3. Analogies
One of the procedures in the formation and appearance of new uses and meanings of words can be found at the root of analogies.
According to Ferrater Mora (1981), an analogy refers to
[…] the correlation between the terms of two or more systems or orders, to wit, the existence of a relationship between each one of the terms of a system and each one of the terms of another. Thus, analogy is equivalent to proportion, which can be understood quantitatively or topologically. Analogy has also been referred to as the similarity of one thing to another, of the similarity of some characters or functions to others. In this last case, analogy consists in the attribution of the same predicates to diverse objects […].
Likewise, the most detailed, primordial and flawless analysis of the concept of analogy is to be found in Aristotle’s (1938) The Organon, specifically in the tripartite conception of terms that are classified as follows:
1) Univocal terms. Those that signify a sole concept and are employed in the same sense.
2) Equivocal terms. Those that express completely different concepts and, therefore, are employed in diverse senses.
3) Derivative terms. Those that, although they express completely different concepts, are not completely different, but only to a certain extent.
As a matter of fact, Aristotle (1933: 147-149) had already employed this notion of the metaphysical ‘being’, which is neither univocal or equivocal, but derivative, because
The term ‘being’ is used in various senses, but with reference to one central idea and one definite characteristic, and not as merely a common epithet. Thus as the term ‘healthy’ always relates to health (either as preserving it or as producing it or as indicating it or as receptive of it), and as ‘medical’ relates to the art of medicine (either possessing it or as naturally adapted