Literature and language games: the didactics of reality

Abstract

Literature can be conceived as a repository of stable and metaphorical meanings, but also as the conviction that all of reality is a metaphor for the verbal. In this sense, Wittgenstein’s notion of language games proposes that these games are nothing less than reality itself, and therefore, a didactic approach appropriate to this perspective should develop thinking skills useful for the contextual reinterpretation of reality by the learner. This approach reinforces the idea of resilience and creative imagination outside of a given context. In this regard, an experience on critical text comprehension with Semiotics and Semiology students at the Technical University of Cotopaxi during the 2025-II academic period, based on systematic observation, documentary analysis of cartographic and literary works, and the recreation of contexts in focus groups, allowed students to move from simple literary interpretations to more complex ones based on these notions of language games and context. Experience seems to indicate the possibility of new technical and didactic contributions, not only from the notion of literature as a repository of vocabularies and metaphors, but also from the advantages of reinterpreting the denotative in new and repeated connotations, thus better focusing on the increasingly multisemantic and changing world of our times.