A few years ago I wrote the chapter on Ordinary Language Philosophy in The Edinburgh (Columbia) Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Philosophies. The chapter got cut in certain ways that I thought diminished its value. Here is a .pdf of a draft of the original chapter.
Congratulations. But the term should be (though I admit that it usually is not) written “ordinary-language philosophy,” as the noun phrase “ordinary language” is being used adjectivally, just as is the noun phrase “twentieth century” is used, and hyphenated, in the title of the volume.
If there were a branch of philosophy called “language philosophy”—for instance, if that were the term for what we call the philosophy of language—and one wanted to distinguish the ordinary kind of it from some other kind or kinds, one would rightly refer to the former as “ordinary language philosophy,” sans hyphen (like “ordinary metaphysics,” etc.). But that is not what is in question here.
Well, the style guides I’m familiar with (up to and including the Chicago Manual of Style – see §7.80) only make the hyphenation of compound modifiers mandatory when there is a real risk of ambiguity. So if there was in fact such a thing as “language philosophy”, then hyphenation would be required to prevent ambiguity, but because there isn’t, it’s not.
When I wrote my paper “The Strange Death of Ordinary Language Philosophy”, recently quoted here to good effect, I tried to find out the exact origins of the term “ordinary language philosophy”, but came up with nothing very definitive. But it was certainly introduced only when the thing itself was already in full swing, as the very earliest references I came up with were as late as 1955-1956 – and unhyphenated from the start, if I recall correctly. A much more popular term back in the day was “linguistic philosophy”. (Which is of course absurd from the standpoint of OLP itself, as its view is that philosophy is always linguistic, whether we like it or not – because human life itself is linguistic, whether we like it or not.)
Cool!