Description and Showing the Way

Wittgenstein's insistence, at #124 of the Investigations, that Philosophy only "describe" Language, commits him to classifying the process of 'showing the way', the significance of which to him is clearly expressed in #309, as a 'description'.  However, in both ordinary discourse as well as the Tractatus, an attribution such as 'The ball is red', is the prototype of descriptive language.  Now, he addresses the variation in #291, by likening descriptions to blueprints--they are "instruments for particular uses".  But, that formulation does not easily apply to the prevalent use of the term.  Instead, the problem for Wittgenstein is that he is trapped in the bottle of the use of the term 'Description', forced to conflate his novel use of it with the prevalent one.  One escape is via the replacement that has been suggested here--'Prescription', for a formulation that 'shows a way'.  Similarly, as has been previously discussed, 'Proposal' and 'Rogative' are more suitable than 'Proposition' and 'Declarative', respectively, to his innovative concept of Language.