Ambiguity Avoidance is Overrated (original) (raw)

Grice's requirements on what is said

Grice imposes two important requirements on the concept of what is said. On the one hand, he takes it to correspond with the usual concept, among linguists and philosophers, of what is said by a speaker by uttering a sen- tence, aka the proposition expressed, the truth-conditions, the content, or the literal meaning. On the other hand, Grice takes what is said to be a criti- cal input for the inference of implicatures by the hearer. In this paper, I’ll argue that these are incompatible roles for a single proposition to play. You can take what is said to be the proposition expressed by the utterance, or you can take it to be the input for the inference of implicatures, but not both. If I am right, the relevant content for the inference of implicatures can be any of a variety of propositions that differ in various ways from what is said. In other words, Grice’s theory needs various forms of contents and not just what is said.

Grice's account of speaker meaning.

The philosophy of language like its empirical cousin the psychology of language is a somewhat overlooked field, but I doubt for very much longer due to its massive potential to revel critically important insights into, human evolution, and the mind's structural and functional aspects. In this essay I will first briefly discuss Grice's account of speaking meaning, what he hoped to achieve by it and its success at describing meaning. Then I shall look at counterexamples to Grice's theory and Grice's reply to those examples and attempt to fix problems raised by them. Finally I shall look at the success of his ultimate goal of reducing sentence meaning to speaker meaning.

Paul Grice and the philosophy of language

Linguistics and Philosophy, 1992

The work of the late Paul Grice ) exerts a powerful influence on the way philosophers, linguists, and cognitive scientists think about meaning and communication. With respect to a particular sentence φ and an "utterer" U, Grice stressed the philosophical importance of separating (i) what φ means, (ii) what U said on a given occasion by uttering φ, and (iii) what U meant by uttering φ on that occasion. Second, he provided systematic attempts to say precisely what meaning is by providing a series of more refined analyses of utterer's meaning, sentence meaning, and what is said. Third, Grice produced an account of how it is possible for what U says and what U means to diverge. Fourth, by characterizing a philosophically important distinction between the "genuinely semantic" and "merely pragmatic" implications of a statement, Grice clarified the relationship between classical logic and the semantics of natural language. Fifth, he provided some much needed philosophical ventilation by deploying his notion of "implicature" to devastating effect against certain overzealous strains of "Ordinary Language Philosophy," without himself abandoning the view that philosophy must pay attention to the nuances of ordinary talk. Sixth, Grice undercut some of the most influential arguments for a philosophically significant notion of "presupposition."

Gricean Semantics and Vague Speaker-Meaning

2017

Presentations of Gricean semantics, including Stephen Neale's in "Silent Reference," totally ignore vagueness, even though virtually every utterance is vague. I ask how Gricean semantics might be adjusted to accommodate vague speaker-meaning. My answer is that it can't accommodate it: the Gricean program collapses in the face of vague speaker-meaning. The Gricean might, however, fi nd some solace in knowing that every other extant meta-semantic and semantic program is in the same boat.

Grice's Cooperative Principle, Maxims of Conversation & Conversational Implicature

Objective: Given a short dialogue which makes use of the maxims, identify the maxim in play, and explain your answer. If applicable, explain the implication created. The Cooperative Principle A basic underlying assumption we make when we speak to one another is that we are trying to cooperate with one another to construct meaningful conversations. This assumption is known as the Cooperative Principle. As stated in H. P. Grice's " Logic and Conversation " (1975): Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged. i In other words, we as speakers try to contribute meaningful, productive utterances to further the conversation. It then follows that, as listeners, we assume that our conversational partners are doing the same. You can think of reasons why someone might be uncooperative in conversation (maybe they're being interrogated for information they don't want to give up; maybe they hate the person they're talking to; maybe they're just crazy) but in the vast majority of conversations, it's safe to assume that both participants are trying to be cooperative. This assumption (that the cooperative principle holds, and the people we're speaking to are trying to cooperate) explains two things: (i) why speech errors are often ignored (or even go unnoticed) in conversation. As long as the meaning the speaker is trying to get across is clear, the listener usually gives them the benefit of the doubt and focuses on the meaning. (ii) why we can find meaning in statements which, on the surface, seem ridiculous, untrue or unrelated (i.e. metaphors, sarcasm, overstatement, understatement, etc.) Rather than assuming that our conversational partner is lying, crazy, or speaking at random, we assume they're trying to get across some meaning, and we can figure out what that meaning is.

Grice and Searle on Meaning

Copula, 2011

Grice characterizes the speaker meaning in terms of intentionality while Searle criticizes Grice that he has not examined the notion of intentionality. This paper argues that the analysis of intentionality implicitly subsists in the Grician account of meaning. To support this, the aim of this paper is to show that in different types of speech act, the Grician account successfully explains the two aspects of intentionality-the representation intention and the communication intention.

Interpretations of the Gricean Conversational Maxims Violations

2019

Normal conversation anticipates that the speaker and the hearer to achieve a successful communication. Grice's perception of conversational maxims requires that speaker meaning be expectable on the basis of sentence meaning according to the violation of cooperative principles of conversation and the ability of the hearer to understand the speaker's meaning. However, this research reviewed serval contexts that applied the violation of the conversational maxims and found that the implicature change in the change of the context, where the manipulation of the conversational maxims plays hidden massage to color the choices to produce particular shades of meanings in terms of production and comprehension.