Gricean Implicature

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  • Created by: A. Person
  • Created on: 05-04-16 19:17

Grice: Logic and Conversation

Grice's theory of meaning involves three key points:

  1. The creation of a semantic/pragmatic divide (pragmatics was never really a distinct subject before)

  2. A systematic way of testing for and computing implicature

  3. Accounting for Strawson-esque problems, while saving logic

  • Strawson argues that ordinary language cannot be treated in terms of language. But Grice argues that logic only screws up pragmatics, not semantics.

  • Grice argues that there is a difference between what is said and what is implicated

  • This difference roughly is the difference between what is meant conventionally; what is encoded into the meanings of words and how they are put together, and information conveyed beyond what is said, for example temporal implication.

Implication

Sometimes, sentences imply things which they do not entail.

Grice's theory of conversational implicature suggests these implications are generated by a set of maxims of conversation.

Hearer's pickup the implications by:

a) assuming co-operation 

or

b) noting a deliberate lack of co-operation

Consider:

  • You can have soup or salad

  • Implied: you can't have both

  • John has two children

  • Implied: John as exactly two children

What is implicated is different from what is logically entailed:

John ate two cookies → entails that he ate some cookies

Test → “John ate two cookies. In fact, the didn't eat any.” (This is clearly a contradiction).

John ate two cookies → implies he ate exactly two.

Test → “John ate two cookies. In fact, he had eight.” (Doesn't yield an actual contradiction.)

We are able to cancel implicature → “John got married and then had a baby, but

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