[...] our use of these concepts cannot take place without their being 'founded' by what we could call 'paradigmatic cases': examples that are common knowledge within a certain life-form, that function as a sort of standard, and thereby form part of the foundation of our meaningful use of certain concepts. Literary fiction and other cultural products could be seen as important suppliers of these paradigmatic examples.

I have little difficuty explaining to somebody what I mean by the world 'brown' or 'meter'. But how do I explain other, more complex relationships, like 'love' [...]? I could contend that my relationship with my wife is a perfect example of 'love', but most people do not know me or my wife, and will therefore not find my example very illuminating. If, on the other hand, I suggest the story of Romeo & Juliet as an example of 'love', then almost everybody will know what I mean. The concept of 'love' cannot be explained (or defined) in one sentence; it requires stories to acquire meaning.

The most influential of these stories we can regard as 'paradigmatic cases' that form the foundation of the meaning that we ascribe to certain concepts, that 'traverse' our talk of them. We can imagine that such complex concepts are not based on just one but many of these paradigmatic cases, and that they do not signify rigid standards, but change, together with the stories that, as time passes, we come to find either more or less meaninful. People make different selections from the available paradigmatic cases and emphasize different aspects. Concepts change as the paradigmatic cases, on which we base our understanding of them, change. Such transformations are changes of our life-form, of our socio-cultural identity. [...]

[...] This Wittgensteinian approach to the functioning of language entails a view of literature that does not regard fictional texts as expressing something unreal, but as a fundamental activity within a community of language users: literary fictions offer detailed depictions of concepts that are essential to our collective understanding of reality.