Face-to-Face Communication

Wittgenstein seems correct, in #27 of the Investigations, to describe as "singular", the case of using someone's name to call them, but not merely in the sense that he means it, i. e. 'distinctive'.  Rather, as Buber, and Levinas show, to which Wittgenstein and his peers seem oblivious, the I-Thou, Face-to-Face experience is opaque and irreducible to any Third-Person scenario.  Accordingly, in particular, mainstream Philosophy of Language misses the singular use of Language that is plainly evident in person-to-person Communication, e. g. the Vocative character of Names and of Utterances, as has been previously discussed.  So, if the priority of First- and Second-Person to Third- is any indication, each of the prominent mainstream atomic concepts--Proposition, Language-Game, Speech Act, etc.--is not only inadequate to what is among the commonest, empirically verifiable, Language-events, i. e. face-to-face Communication, but a groundless contrivance that abstracts from it.