The Picture Theory of Language

People are wrong about names and that Matters

I remember a physicist friend having a mild panic attack when he realised that people, generally, had a very scant understanding of physics. “But how do they get around in the world!?”, he wailed. We calmed him down and let him know that people have a sort of “folk theory” of physics which, for their purposes, is good enough. Object falls, hot things make other things hot, you can’t walk through a wall. Close enough.

Over the past 11 posts of this series we’ve been documenting a lot of… weird aspects of language:

• Names can kill what they describe;

• They can breathe new life into old;

• Changing them changes how people react to the same thing.

• You can use them to dismiss;

• and to demand compliance.

How come these are the case, like, at all? Why do names have such strange, quizzical powers? My suggestion is that it’s for the same reason that had our physicist friend panic: the same way people have a folk theory of physics they have a folk theory of language. However, while most people don’t deal with speeds or sizes that would break the folk theory of physics, they very much do deal with things that break their folk theory of language. Not only that accidentally break it, but that were designed to break it.

But, to appreciate that, we first have to understand what the folk theory of language even is.

The Picture Theory

“When they (my elders) named some object, and accordingly moved towards something, I saw this and grasped that the thing was called by the sound they uttered when they meant to point it out. Their intention was shown by their bodily movements, as it were, the natural language of all peoples: the expression of the face, the play of the eyes, the movement of other parts of the body, and the tone of voice which expresses our state of mind in seeking, having, rejecting, or avoiding something. Thus I gradually learnt to understand what things the words stood for; and after I had trained my mouth to form these signs, I used them to express my own desires.”
— Confessions, Book I, Chapter 8.

It is with this very quote that Wittgenstein opens the Philosophical Investigations to introduce the theory he’ll spend the rest of the book dismantling and, with it, his own previous view, first expressed in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.

Here’s how Wittgenstein paints Augustine’s theory of language learning above:

• People point to objects;

• They say the corresponding word;

• The child associates the word with the object.

Augustine’s is a referential model of language: words are names for things. Sentences are combinations of names. First a thing exists, then we attach a word to it. Like placing a sticker on a jar. The meaning of the word is the thing it points to.

This is what philosophers have since called the “Picture Theory” or “Augustinian Picture” of language:

• Words = names for objects, properties, actions, feelings

• Sentences = combinations of names

• Meaning = reference (the thing named)

• Understanding = mentally matching words to their corresponding objects

Augustine’s theory works great. For physical objects.

The word “Tree” points to trees. “Rock” points to rocks. For a child learning language by watching adults point at things and saying their name out loud, the Augustinian Picture Theory seems obviously true.

But the theory is meant to extend well beyond just physical objects: it implies that each word corresponds to a thing, in the broadest sense—an object, property, action, feeling, etc.—and that the meaning of the word is the thing it stands for. But is it though?

Counter-example that will be outdated in the length of one TikTok

We can skip Wittgenstein’s 1953’s carefully crafted counter-examples: online language mutates so quickly that counterexamples to Augustine abound. On the other hand, this very turnover means they’ll be outdated by the time you reach the end of this essay. Read on while you still can.

Meaning Without Reference a/k/a “67”

“Six Seven”: all the kids are saying it and all the seniors want to know what it means. A capricious example, had Dictionary.com not crowned it Word of the Year 2025. Here’s what they had to say about it:

“Perhaps the most defining feature of 67 is that it’s impossible to define. It’s meaningless, ubiquitous, and nonsensical. In other words, it has all the hallmarks of brainrot... Still, it remains meaningful to the people who use it because of the connection it fosters.”

Read that again: “the most defining feature” is that it’s “impossible to define”. It’s “meaningless” yet “meaningful.”

According to the Picture Theory, this is impossible. If meaning is reference—if a word’s meaning is what it points to—then a word that points to nothing is, ipso facto, meaningless. Full stop.

But “67” is meaningful: it signals in-group membership, it conveys a vibe, and creates social connection. It does work language is supposed to do. It just doesn’t refer to anything in particular.

The picture theory says: no reference, no meaning. 67 says: well, it doesn’t say anything. But it still means something. And that’s kind of the point: yes meaning, no reference. Ergo, the Augustinian picture is wrong.

Why The Wrongness Matters

Augustine is wrong and, with him, most people in the vise of the folk theory of language.

It is the wrongness of their shared theory that makes the “weird” aspects of language documented in the intro, and all along this series, seem weird in the first place! If names were merely stickers on a jar it would be very strange indeed that altering the sticker would alter the content.

But names aren’t stickers! People think they are—neutral labels on pre-existing things—but they’re actually more like levers! They build and destroy and coordinate and birth and kill and summon and bind and distort and camouflage and sanctify and contaminate and collapse and edify and weaponise and and …

Anyways—point being: there is a gap between what people think language is, and does, and what language actually is and does.

It is due to that gap that it is possible to:

• Invent phenomena through naming alone (if there’s a word, there must be a thing → people act as if there were, effectively bringing into being);

• Change reactions by changing labels (different words → different “things”);

• Control identity by controlling what names mean (shift the boundaries → shift the behavior);

And many more things we’ll see tomorrow.

Specifically we’ll see ways this gap gets exploited.

Remember my panicky physicist friend? Truth is people’s folk theory of physics might make them worse bowling players, but they don’t need to know the second law of thermodynamics to not let their hand linger too long on a stove.

The key difference is that, with language, people aren’t just passively getting things wrong. No. They’re being actively exploited.

And tomorrow we’ll explore how : )