Full Idea
The theory of language which I designate the 'Picture Theory' says that language pictures reality in roughly the sense that we can 'read off' features of reality from our ways of speaking about it.
Gist of Idea
The Picture Theory claims we can read reality from our ways of speaking about it
Source
John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 03.2)
Book Reference
Heil,John: 'From an Ontological Point of View' [OUP 2005], p.23
A Reaction
Heil, quite rightly, attacks this view very strongly. I think of it as the great twentieth century philosophical heresy, that leads to shocking views like relativism and anti-realism.