How did the linguistic turn change philosophical inquiry?

The "linguistic turn" refers to the adoption of the idea that philosophical problems are, in an important sense, linguistic or conceptual in nature. This shift fundamentally changed philosophical inquiry by repositioning the study of language as the primary method for addressing traditional philosophical questions.12

Within analytic philosophy, this change manifested in two primary approaches:

• Formalism: Philosophers sought to resolve conceptual issues by uncovering the underlying logical structures of language. By representing these structures through modern logic, they aimed to clarify permissible inferences and establish the logical boundaries of concepts.21
• Ordinary Language Philosophy: This approach emphasized that philosophical problems often arise from misunderstandings of how language is used in everyday life. Rather than constructing ideal languages, these philosophers, such as J.L. Austin and the later Ludwig Wittgenstein, argued that the inherited categories and distinctions embedded in ordinary language provide the best guide to philosophical truth.341

Ultimately, the linguistic turn led many philosophers to conceive of traditional problems—such as those in ethics or the mind-body problem—as problems regarding the logical or grammatical status of the statements used to express them.32