Wittgenstein's Theory of Language Games and the Freshman Composition Class

Ludwig Wittgenstein's theory of language games, although largely undeveloped, can provide the basis for a useful analogy between the composition process and the playing of a game. Teachers can motivate students to write by presenting the composition process as a language game. The following points should prove helpful in accomplishing this end: no game is as much fun when it is first being learned as it is after it has been mastered; people know whether they have lost in any game; in the early stages of a game, people are allowed to profit from mistakes; and all games have rules which are meant to be followed. Teachers of freshman composition should concern themselves with matters of clarity, organization, and meaning and not with those basic "rules of the game" whose mastery is only a matter of practice. (KS)