The Disclosive Function of Linguistic Signs

Abstract

This chapter adds a more specific level to the Heideggerian framework by considering the complex disclosive function linguistic signs have for Heidegger. This task is approached by considering his ambivalent attitude toward everyday language use (‘idle talk’), which is presented as both practically necessary and somehow deficient. To understand this ambivalence, it reviews Heidegger’s earlier conception of philosophical concepts’ function as ‘formal indication’, before showing how his earlier views reappear in Being and Time and how, together with the foundational role of purposive understanding discussed in chapter 1, they account for Heidegger’s ambivalence toward everyday language use. Given the disparate factors at work in Heidegger’s conception of linguistic signs, it then proposes a distinction between presentational sense and pragmatic sense, before explaining how the limitations of Heidegger’s discussion define the task for the following chapters.