The Purpose of Philosophy of Language

Plato's interest in Language, following the fate of Socrates, is primarily political--to debunk the sophistry of influential rhetoric.  The ambition of Leibniz, probably the pioneer of modern Philosophy of Language, is the development of a universal language that would make it "possible for people of different nations to communicate", as he states it in Towards a Universal Characteristic.  Nietzsche's  attention to Language is closer to Plato's than to Leibniz'--to expose the latent ideology in the common use of terms such as 'good' and 'evil'.  In contrast, it is difficult to glean a purpose to Russellian Philosophy of Language, aside from some vague dissatisfaction with Hegelianism, and the inconvenience of gimmick propositions such as 'The Morning Star is the Evening Star' and 'The present King of France is bald'.  Accordingly, the attempts of the later Wittgenstein to liberate 'ordinary language' from that Logicism is, as he occasionally acknowledges, similarly rootless, since there is little indication that everyday Communication needs a Philosophy of Language to be effective.  So, since Anglo-American academia is nowadays dominated by Russell's program, and, to a lesser extent, by Wittgenstein's reaction to Logicism, contemporary Anglo-American 'Philosophy' has been trivialized as no more than an idle end-in-itself intellectual entertainment for a very few.