Magritte, music and methods of language description

Abstract

One way of pinpointing the characteristics of language is to look at Magritte’s painting of a pipe including the following comment at the bottom: “Ceci n’est pas une pipe”. In view of his well-known interest in the differences between pictures, words and real objects, I think what Magritte means is that the picture of the pipe is not the same as the real object pipe and, generally, that pictures, words and objects of the real world are not the same thing.