和海德格尔的 "language speaks man", Richard Rorty's idea of an "ironist" (反讽主义者) 属于一个思路, 意在表明人总是无可奈何地局限于一个特定的语言氛围。

Rorty: "I shall define an "ironist" as someone who fulfills three conditions: (1) She has radical and continuing doubts about the final vocabulary she currently uses, because she has been impressed by other vocabularies, vocabularies taken as final by people or books she has encountered; (2) she realizes that argument phrased in her present vocabulary can neither underwrite or disolve these doubts; (3) in so far as she philosophizes about her situation, she does not think that her vocabulary is closer to reality than others, that it is in touch with a power not herself. Ironists who are inclined to philosophize see the choice between vocabularies as made neither within a neutral and metavocabulary nor by an attempt to fight one's way past appearances to the real, but simply by playing the new off against the old. "