systemic functional linguistics may help us identify linguistic functions; historical linguistics may help us identify what processes underlie natural linguistic change, so that we can hope to exploit these in inducing change.

or if we might do better with changing our concept of truth, or freedom, or death, or marriage, or intelligence.

Our terms and concepts serve as tools – not just to report on or investigate the world, but to do many things: to greet, express our attitudes, communicate rules of games or rules of inference, make calculations, organize our laws and social lives, and much more.

These are cases of what David Plunkett and Tim Sundell call “Metalinguistic Negotiation”: where we use words implicitly in order to negotiate for how (or whether) these terms ought to be used.

Or it may work on concepts that are not the province of science at all, but still play central roles in human life – concepts such as art, freedom, responsibility, consciousness, or person.

Or it may focus on reconstructing our old concepts in a changed context – in the current social and technological context, what concepts do we need of intelligence, privacy, information, disease, and so on?

Conceptual engineering projects have broadened greatly in scope since Carnap’s beginnings, including not only attempts to (re-)engineer scientific concepts, but also social concepts, logical concepts, and other philosophical concepts.

clarifying, modifying and developing concepts for use in the empirical work of the sciences.

Instead, we can work to evaluate and reconstruct the concepts and language we use, and sometimes even to construct new concepts and terms to help us.