On software engineering and language

My paper shows that a linguistic approach is highly relevant for the structure and methods of software design with the Wittgensteinian meaning as use at the center of it. I view statements in programming languages as Austinian performatives with the requisite felicitous circumstances differing from the ones in natural language. Brandom’s meaning-use analysis provides the conceptual apparatus of VP/PV-sufficiency to view computer programs as recursive semantic-pragmatic interactions between expressive vocabularies. I then demonstrate how these relationships naturally extend beyond computer code to human communication. The statements in a programming language and user stories expose the structure of authorship, audience, and agency-licensing specific to the meaning-use structures in software engineering. This has substantial practical implications as it puts in question the traditional representational and modeling approaches to software engineering. I close with a promise of future work on conceptualization of pattern languages as an alternative.