All reasonably systematic uses of language are to be seen as having a particular power-enforcing function. You believe what the young surgeon tells you, and so give him permission to anaesthetize you, cut you up, and help you recover. The language game of the discourse expresses and enacts the authority of those who are empowered to use it within a social group, which includes hospitals, law courts, boards of examiners, and professors like me writing books like this. It can also be used to subordinate or exclude or marginalize those who are outside it
