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Why did the view of logic as a universal language make logical semantics difficult to discuss?

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Marble bust of Aristotle with a beard and draped robe, showing detailed facial features and wavy hair, set against a dark background. — Applied logic Aristotle, marble portrait bust, Roman copy (2nd century bce) of a Greek original (c. 325 bce); in the Museo Nazionale Romano, Rome.

The view of logic as a universal language—a lingua universalis—posits that a logical system serves as the all-encompassing medium for communication and thought. Under this conception, which was held by thinkers such as Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell, the logic itself is the framework within which all discourse occurs.1

This perspective makes discussing logical semantics difficult because it creates a barrier to analysis: if a system is the universal medium, one cannot "step outside" of it to examine its own semantic properties—such as what its individual terms refer to—without falling into triviality or nonsense. Consequently, any attempt to discuss the semantics of the logic within the logic itself is effectively blocked, leading to the thesis that logical semantics are inexpressible.12

To overcome this, logicians eventually shifted toward viewing logic as a "calculus" (calculus ratiocinator), which allows the system to be treated as an object of study from the outside. This shift enabled the development of metalogic and the use of a metalanguage to analyze the object language, a framework famously advanced by Alfred Tarski to define truth conditions.123