Spoken word, written text and beyond

In philosophical reflection about the very nature of philosophy (i.e. in metaphilosophical reflection) one rarely encounters a debate over the issue of what form of discourse in fact philosophy employs or should employ. The particular characteristics of philosophical discourse are unfortunately often (tacitly) dismissed as stylistic. They are thus felt to be of interest to literary theory and linguistics rather than to philosophy. Indeed, philosophy is expected to convey some propositional content regardless of the variation in the use of linguistic forms or forms of discourse. Lang (1983) aptly comments on this situation, introducing the metaphor of a “literary museum without walls”.