Abstract
The paper examines the concept of silence in the early work of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus) from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. One of the goals of this paper is to explore the dichotomy of cases being silent-speaking in the Tractatus and focus on the criteria of meaning and meaninglessness, by which individual sentences are classified in one category or the other.
As a basic criterion for categorization is considered logical form indicating the presence of meaning. Another objective is to analyze the specific categories of silence in terms of the theory of cognitive metaphor G.
Lakoff and M.Johnsona. Post offers a comparison of the reference theory in the context of the Tractatus and cognitive realism filing G.
Lakoff and M. Johnson.
Against the background of both the theory paper shows the role and importance of categories of silence in shaping the semantic theory of language. The work points to the "metaphorical" content of the categories of silence in Tractatus.