French Literature Reviews - 2026
Y. Érard, Des jeux de langage chez l’enfant. Saussure, Wittgenstein, Cavell et la transmission du langage
Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics
Yves Erard
Children's Language Games:
Saussure, Wittgenstein, Cavell and the Transmission of Language
BSN Press, Collection "A contrario Campus", 2017
ISBN 978-2-940516-77-3
368 p. — 35.00 CHF | 29.00 €
My words echo in my head and vibrate like a string inside a piano to form the melody of my thought. Where do they come from? What are they the echo of? Are they truly mine, or am I at their mercy? Do they belong to me, or do they possess me like a voice that is not my own? To understand where the music comes from, I would simply like to lift the lid and observe the mechanics at work: the faculty of abstraction, models of categorization, mental representation, symbolic function. I ponder the question, yet the origin of my speech remains obscure. I cannot quite grasp how I learned to play my words.
The mystery clears when we film how language passes from one generation to the next within the intimacy of our lives. Indeed, it is from adults that children learn the meaning of their words. Tracing the sequence of language games through which our mother tongue becomes a familiar tune helps us understand our words by revealing how our expressions are connected in everyday use.
All things considered, the book you hold in your hands turns out to be nothing more than a film. The grammatical perspective it adopts has no other ambition than to make visible the obvious that has always been right before our eyes.
Yves Erard holds a PhD in linguistics and is a senior lecturer and researcher at the University of Lausanne.
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Table of Contents:
Introduction:
Where we learn what "Children's Language Games" means, and how the interest in ordinary language spans the entire 20th century through the work of Saussure, Wittgenstein, and Cavell.
Chapter 1: Seeing the Same Thing
Where we learn that our knowledge can grow without acquiring new facts, simply by seeing differently.
Chapter 2: Language Acquisition
Where it is shown that, alongside learning words, a child learns what words are, what a teacher and a learner are, what authority is, and how to escape it. From which we deduce that learning to speak is not merely about learning words.
Chapter 3: Joint Attention
Where we learn that joint attention involves both being attentive and being considerate.
Chapter 4: Words and Pains
Where the child learns to say "Ouch!" without pain in order to avoid actually suffering it.
Chapter 5: Words and Colors
Where the child learns to recognize colors by systematically giving them the same name.
Chapter 6: The Symbolic Function
Where we learn that the stability of our representations and the variability of their uses are the preconditions for the transmission of our language—and thus for the life of language itself.
Chapter 7: The Grammar of First Language Games
Here we unfold the map of the child's early language games and recognize their configuration as both complex and familiar.
Chapter 8: Reinventing Linguistics
Here the ordinary language philosophy of Wittgenstein and Cavell breathes new life into linguistics.
Conclusion:
Here we may recognize that our words are our bonds. They are our anchors as well as our chains.
The study of language acquisition often intersects with the philosophy of ordinary language, a movement that emphasizes how meaning is rooted in social practices and everyday interactions. This work examines the transmission of speech from adults to children, viewing language as a series of activities or games. The text shifts the focus from abstract mental representations to the shared experiences of learning, where the child develops an understanding of authority, attention, and symbolic function within the intimacy of daily life.
Readers interested in the intersection of linguistics and philosophy may find this analysis relevant. The text situates the child's learning process within a grammatical framework, noting that the stability of language relies on the variability of its uses in practice. By tracing how expressions become familiar through joint attention and social interaction, the book explores how the use of words serves as both a foundation for human connection and a structural constraint on individual thought and expression.