The article examines the role and place of L. Wittgenstein’s ideas in the formation of the linguistic turn in philosophy in terms of representative and communicative dimensions. There are contradictions in the explanation of the history of the development of the linguistic turn, unlike in the analysis of another important intellectual event of European philosophy – the Copernican turn. Some researchers interpret the linguistic turn in a representative way, and some – in a communicative way. Nothing of the sort arises in the case of the analysis of the Copernican turn where everything is clear. According to the authors, this situation is due to the nature of the philosophy that had an impact on both events. In the first case, we are dealing with a clear and holistic concept of I. Kant, in the second – with two contradictory theories of L. Wittgenstein. In this interpretation, L. Wittgenstein appears as the main founder of the linguistic turn. This imposes an obligation on the authors to reveal the content of both of his fundamental books and to show their correspondence to the representative and communicative vector of the development of the linguistic turn. The main methods used in the research are historical-philosophical and structural-functional. The article is divided into four parts: 1) analysis of the history of interpretations of the development of the linguistic turn; 2) the metaphysical nature of L. Wittgenstein’s first book and the anti-metaphysical nature of the second; 3) the representative dimension in the “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus”; 4) the communicative dimension in “Philosophical Investigations”. The authors concluded that the linguistic turn should be perceived as a holistic phenomenon, and the communicative turn following it can be considered as a convergence of trends laid down by L. Wittgenstein. Key words: L. Wittgenstein, the linguistic turn, communicative turn, representation, communication, reference theory of meaning, ordinary language, ideal language, relativism, language game, rules of language game.