Language does not describe any Thing [04.26.98]

Given that language users as a rule achieve a great deal of linguistic compatibility with the others of their group, they easily come to believe that the words they use actually refer to objects in a real world and that, therefore, language does provide a description of things beyond individual experience. The implicit reasoning that leads to this illusions is something like: if so many refer to the same things, the things must be real. But this overlooks the way in which each language user constructs meanings, and that these meanings had to be adapted to the others’ use of words and thus modified the practice of segmenting and talking about experience.

Ernst von Glasersfeld [1995]. Radical Constructivism: A way of learning & knowing. Falmer Press: London. P. 48