private language

private language

1. A way of communicating that is shared between and understood by only a few people. My sister and I have had our own private language ever since we were girls—our brothers still can't understand it! After working together for so many years, Ellen and I have a private language that is all our own.
2. philosophy A type of inner language only comprehensible to a single person. The concept was introduced by Ludwig Wittgenstein, who argued that it could not exist. The concept of private language is still a topic of debate among philosophers, especially due to its potential ramifications for metaphysics.
See also: language, private
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • how the other half lives
  • talk at
  • talk at (one)
  • info dump
  • enthusiastic consent
  • it's a (type of person) thing
  • it's a... thing
  • in the flesh
  • out of touch
  • in layman's terms
References in periodicals archive
"When the experimental schools are cancelled, many of us will not be able to send our children to private language schools because of their high fees.
Through the survey of 78 institutes, Read and Hayes (2003) found that the majority of the New Zealand centres were private language schools, and that they had mainly Asian students enrolled on their courses.
Wittgenstein in this suite of comments accordingly makes explicit at least a main part of the philosophical grammatical connection between rule-following and the private language argument:
To simplify and clarify his findings, he conducted his research at private language schools, where learning English and passing the test are the only objective.
"At college art had almost been like a private language, with people doing peculiar things and others saying 'what the dickens is that?' "As a teacher, I had to really simplify how I taught art to children.
These fourteen essays include how much we know about Jutta and Hildegard at Disibodeberg and Rupertsberg, reform in Germany from 1080 to 1180, Elisabeth of Schonan, the schools and the critiques, claims to Hildegard's prophetic authority, Hildegard's musical work uncovered, musical hagiography, the theory of repentance, medical magical miracles, and the history of reception of Hildegard of Bingen, Particularly interesting are the notes on Hildegard's unknown, private language and writing.
Much of the tale is told in flashbacks to the 1940s, when Vida was a child, and focuses on twins who share a private language, an incestuously close brother and sister and a scheming governess - basically, pretty much all the ingredients needed for a classic gothic novel.
However, I believe that it actually points towards a more fundamental, conceptual difficulty, (4) which stems from the fact that a monopolistic lawgiver and law interpreter cannot make a logically meaningful distinction between obeying the law (i.e., making verdicts compatible with the binding legal code) and only claiming to obey it, just as the user of a private language cannot make a logically meaningful distinction between obeying the rules of such a language and only claiming to obey them (Wittgenstein, 1953; Kripke, 1982; Nielsen, 2008).
Back in the early 1990s I worked as an English instructor for an elite private language school that had a contract with TeletaE-.
The man is a South African, Al-Maqdashi said, and was working as an English instructor for a private language institute in the city.
Infinity, proof, contradiction, the notion of a proposition, logical atomism, the limits of sense and rule-following are all accorded a chapter or part of a chapter, as are meaning, understanding, privacy, private language, first-person experience, sense data, action, the will, other minds, scepticism, certainty and aspect seeing.
Anna Zaluska, 25, who teaches Hebrew at a private language school in Warsaw, explained that one reason for the increased interest in Hebrew study is increased economic cooperation between Israel and Poland.
However the report finds that, despite efforts by governments in the region to improve the teaching of English in schools, the best-quality teaching is still found in private language schools, and therefore out of reach financially for the majority.
Sam Gordon's trompe l'oeil, his seventh solo show at Feature, consists of a series of collage-like paintings that seem, when taken together, to reveal the artist's heady, abstruse exploration of his own private language.
The reason that we have selected teachers from private language schools and not public schools is that teachers in public schools are permanently employed in Iran, not having any fear of losing their jobs, but teachers in private language schools are temporality employed.