It is frequently said of the so-called 'linguistic philosophers' that, through concentrating their attention on words and their meanings, they have abandoned the study of 'the world' or of 'reality'. This accusation reveals a curious misconception about what a word is. There is, I suppose, a sense of the word 'word' in which, if I were to cut out of the page of a book a piece of paper carefully chosen as to position, what I should have would be a word. This could be studied without studying any more of reality than the piece of inky paper. Perhaps, even, there are certain aspects of linguistic studies which do not involve any consideration of meanings. If so, they have little to do with philosophy—even 'linguistic philosophy'. But philosophers are concerned with words as having meanings or uses; and these at any rate cannot be studied without seeing how words are used, in concrete situations, to say various things; and, of course, this involves (as is evident from our practice) a careful study of the situations, in order to find out what is being said. Thus, the philosopher who asks what is meant by saying 'I intend to kill him' has to ask himself how this expression would, concretely, be used; and this involves a study of more than pieces of inky paper. A full philosophical examination of language would involve a full examination of everything that can be talked about—and if there are things that cannot be talked about, they cannot in any case become the subject of a philosophical enquiry.
(R. M. Hare, "A School for Philosophers," chap. 3 in Essays on Philosophical Method, New Studies in Practical Philosophy, ed. W. D. Hudson [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972], 38-53, at 51 [italics in original] [essay first published in 1960])
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 