Meaning and the real life of language—Learning from “pathological” cases in science classrooms

•Pragmatic language philosophies have no use for “meaning”.•The case of 10 iterations of “penis” is employed to re-theorize language-in-use.•A pragmatic perspective on language in education is articulated.•Further classroom episodes are discussed in terms of the function of {sound-words}.

In this study, a contribution to the nature of language and its implication for linguistics in education, I take up Vygotskij's (1934) and Vološinov's (1930) discussion of an episode from the diary of Dostoevsky, in which six drunken workers have a (pathological?) “conversation” that exists only in the six-fold repetition of the same profane word. The analysis of these discussions leads to a critique of the notion of “meaning” (private or shared) associated with and denoted by words. I articulate a pragmatist approach to language, including the call for abandoning the concept altogether (Wittgenstein, Davidson, Rorty). Fragments from science classrooms are used to exemplify the need to go beyond the literal sense of words and the associated divorce of thought from the fullness of life. Implications for research and practice are sketched.