Q0602

“A language, most assuredly, is not conceptually neutral; syntax and vocabulary are…” — Kwasi Wiredu ("Toward Decolonizing African Philosophy and Religion")

Verified English quotation. Primary source: "Toward Decolonizing African Philosophy and Religion". Theme: language.

English

A language, most assuredly, is not conceptually neutral; syntax and vocabulary are apt to suggest definite modes of conceptualization.
Thinker Kwasi Wiredu
School Africana Philosophy
Source "Toward Decolonizing African Philosophy and Religion"
Theme Language
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source and attribution

The archive attributes this English wording to "Toward Decolonizing African Philosophy and Religion" and files it under Africana Philosophy. That locator distinguishes the passage from loose internet attributions: readers can return to the named work or section to check translation, surrounding argument, and edition-specific wording.

About Kwasi Wiredu

Kwasi Wiredu (1931–2022) was a Ghanaian philosopher trained in Accra and at Oxford under P. F.

How to read this passage

Across 4 recurring voices here (notably Ludwig Wittgenstein and Kwasi Wiredu), language is framed through Analytic Philosophy and Africana Philosophy. Some passages define language; others warn how it fails; still others relocate it inside habit, community, or language. This passage enters that discussion through language, knowledge, society.

Concepts in this quote

Language
Language appears in this archive as a live philosophical concern—not a slogan. These verified English passages show how thinkers treat language as a problem of judgment, practice, or explanation.
Knowledge
Knowledge is the philosophical study of what we can justifiably claim to know—and where certainty ends.
Society
Society is the web of institutions, customs, and mutual expectations in which individual freedom takes shape.

How to cite this quotation

APA: Kwasi Wiredu. (n.d.). A language, most assuredly, is not conceptually neutral; syntax and vocabulary are apt to suggest definite modes of conceptualization. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0602

MLA: Kwasi Wiredu. “A language, most assuredly, is not conceptually neutral;….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0602.

Chicago: Kwasi Wiredu. “A language, most assuredly, is not conceptually neutral;….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0602.

Frequently asked questions

What is the source of the quotation “A language, most assuredly, is not conceptually neutral;…”?

The passage is attributed to Kwasi Wiredu, "Toward Decolonizing African Philosophy and Religion". The archive attributes this English wording to "Toward Decolonizing African Philosophy and Religion" and files it under Africana Philosophy. That locator distinguishes the passage from loose internet attributions: readers can return to the named work or section to check translation, surrounding argument, and edition-specific wording.

What does Kwasi Wiredu mean by language?

Across 4 recurring voices here (notably Ludwig Wittgenstein and Kwasi Wiredu), language is framed through Analytic Philosophy and Africana Philosophy. Some passages define language; others warn how it fails; still others relocate it inside habit, community, or language. This passage enters that discussion through language, knowledge, society.

Explore Kwasi Wiredu on language

Same thinker

More from Kwasi Wiredu

  1. By decolonization, I mean divesting African philosophical thinking of all undue influences emanating from our colonial past. The crucial word in this formulation is "undue".
  2. On the negative side, avoiding or reversing through a critical conceptual self-awareness the unexamined assimilation in our thought of the conceptual frameworks embedded in the foreign philosophical traditions that have had an impact on African life and thought. And, on the positive side, exploiting as much as is judicious the resources of our own indigenous conceptual schemes in our philosophical meditations.
  3. It was a democracy because government was by the consent, and subject to the control, of the people as expressed through their representatives. It was consensual because, at least as a rule, that consent was negotiated on the principle of consensus.
  4. By contrast, the majoritarian system might be said to be, in principle, based on consent without consensus.
  5. A theory of truth is not of any real universal significance unless it offers some account of the notion of being so.

All quotations by Kwasi Wiredu

Same theme

More on language

  1. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
  2. What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use.
  3. The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
  4. The meaning of a word is its use in the language.
  5. He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.

Browse the language theme