The Linguistic Turn Then and Now: From Philosophy to Artificial Intelligence

In the beginning was the Word. AI image

Introduction

Before the twentieth century, language was largely regarded as a transparent vessel of thought, a medium through which reason expressed itself rather than something that shaped it. From Descartes to Kant, philosophers sought to uncover the universal structures of mind, assuming that words merely mirrored preexisting ideas. The intellect, not expression, stood at the center of inquiry.

In the early decades of the twentieth century, however, a radical transformation took place. Thinkers began to suspect that the very problems of philosophy—those of knowledge, being, and truth—were bound to the structures of language. This intellectual movement, later termed the linguistic turn, shifted attention from consciousness and reality to the symbolic systems through which both become intelligible. More than a century later, the twenty-first century finds itself amid another revolution centered on words. The rise of large language models and generative technologies has once again brought linguistic form and function to the heart of cultural creation. Both moments, philosophy’s earlier awakening and today’s computational renaissance, share a striking conviction: that language is not merely a means of describing the world, but a force capable of making it.

The Twentieth-Century Linguistic Turn

The linguistic turn emerged through the work of philosophers seeking to bring clarity and rigor to thought. Gottlob Frege’s studies in logic and meaning laid the groundwork, showing that the sense and reference of expressions determine how truth is understood. Bertrand Russell extended this insight, arguing that the logical structure of propositions mirrors the structure of reality. Ludwig Wittgenstein, perhaps the pivotal figure of this transformation, declared in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) that “the limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” To understand meaning, for him, was to grasp the logical scaffolding through which thought becomes articulate.

By mid-century, Wittgenstein himself had turned from formal logic to ordinary language. In the Philosophical Investigations (1953), he insisted that meaning arises from use, from the myriad “language-games” embedded in daily life. Philosophical puzzles, he argued, stem not from metaphysical mysteries but from the misuse of words. This insight inspired the movement of ordinary language philosophy, exemplified by J. L. Austin and P. F. Strawson, who examined not what words represent but how they work.

Across the Channel, continental thinkers reached similar conclusions through different routes. Ferdinand de Saussure’s structural linguistics conceived of language as a system of signs in which meaning is relational, not referential. Later figures—Heidegger, Derrida, Foucault—pushed the insight further, treating language as the horizon of being, interpretation, and power. By the time Richard Rorty published The Linguistic Turn (1967), the phrase had come to signify a shared conviction: that philosophy’s deepest questions are, in essence, questions about language itself.

From Reflection to Generation: Language in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

The twenty-first century has witnessed a new kind of linguistic turn, no longer confined to philosophy but realized through technology. With the emergence of generative systems capable of composing text, code, music, and imagery, language has become not only a medium of communication but a material of creation. The philosophical intuition that language shapes reality has taken on concrete form: words now build, simulate, and animate digital worlds.

This transformation is nowhere more evident than in the practice of prompt engineering, the art of crafting linguistic cues that direct generative systems toward desired outcomes. Each prompt is an experiment in syntax and tone, revealing how subtle shifts in phrasing yield entirely different results. It is, in a sense, Wittgenstein’s language-game replayed in a computational register. The meaning of a prompt, like that of a word, depends on its use within a particular rule-governed system.

What philosophers once analyzed in theory has become a practical challenge for technologists, artists, and everyday users alike: how does language generate meaning? The earlier linguistic turn sought to clarify thought; the current one produces it. Language has moved from being the object of reflection to becoming the instrument of creation.

Continuities and Contrasts

Despite their differences, both turns share a fundamental recognition: language is never neutral. It frames perception, orders understanding, and shapes what can be conceived or imagined. In the twentieth century, this realization dismantled the assumption of a transparent bond between words and world. Today, it urges us to examine the architectures through which machines simulate understanding. When an algorithm translates a phrase into an image or a video, it enacts the very principle Saussure articulated—that meaning arises from relations within a system, not from any inherent correspondence to things.

Yet there is also a decisive shift, from limit to generation. The philosophers of the earlier linguistic turn sought to chart the boundaries of what can be said; the technologists of the present use language to extend those boundaries. Words no longer merely describe reality, they instruct it. As linguistic commands begin to shape digital processes, language acquires a creative potency that once belonged only to art or myth, echoing the ancient notion of the logos as the world’s formative principle.

Conclusion

The linguistic turn, once a philosophical revelation, has returned in technological guise. What began as a method for clarifying thought has evolved into a means of constructing digital realities. The insights of the past century now find their mirror in the systems of the present: we live, as Wittgenstein foresaw, within the limits of language, but those limits are being tested by machines that speak.

Whether this new turn will deepen our understanding of meaning or merely multiply its representations remains an open question. Yet one thing is clear: to think through language today is to participate in creation itself. If, as the Gospel of John declares, “In the beginning was the Word,” then our age confronts a technological echo of that ancient truth, the Word once more made generative, the act of saying transformed into the act of making.

Bibliography

• Austin, J. L. How to Do Things with Words. Oxford University Press, 1962.
• Rorty, Richard, ed. The Linguistic Turn: Essays in Philosophical Method. University of Chicago Press, 1967.
• Saussure, Ferdinand de. Course in General Linguistics. Trans. Roy Harris. Duckworth, 1983.
• Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. Trans. G. E. M. Anscombe. Blackwell, 1953.
• Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Routledge, 1921.
• Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. PublicAffairs, 2019.