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Implicature. Pragmatics. So far in class we’ve been concerned with literal meaning . But people mean more things when they use words than just what those words literally mean. Presupposition. “Who stole the money?” Presupposes someone stole the money. “Michael’s brother won the race.”
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Pragmatics So far in class we’ve been concerned with literal meaning. But people mean more things when they use words than just what those words literally mean.
Presupposition “Who stole the money?” • Presupposes someone stole the money. “Michael’s brother won the race.” • Presupposes Michael has a brother. “Michael stopped using heroin.” Presupposes Michael used to use heroin.
Overstatement (Hyperbole) • “He’s as strong as an ox.” • “She’s faster than the wind.” • “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.”
H.P. Grice • British philosopher • One of the most influential theorists of pragmatics
“Implicate” Grice introduces a new word ‘implicate’ to describe a certain phenomenon.
“Implicate” S1: “How is X doing in his new job at the bank?” S2: “He’s doing well, he likes his colleagues, and he hasn’t been to prison yet.” S2 implicates that S1 is troublesome and liable to steal from the bank he works for (or something like that).
Second Example [I write on your application to graduate school]: “She has very good handwriting.” This is a phenomenon often called “damning by faint praise.” I implicate that you’re not a good philosopher, because although I praise you in the letter, I don’t praise you high enough, or on your relevant abilities.
Implicature Implicature is something that a speaker does, not something that a sentence does. What a speaker implicates is different from what s/he says. Implicatures are also not what the hearer learns, beyond the literal meaning, from what the speaker says.
Speaker Meaning Suppose I say: “Stop walking so slowly! Get out of my way!” You may learn that I am a very disagreeable person. But I am not implicating that, because I am not attempting to get you to believe that I am disagreeable.
H.P. Grice Grice’s investigation is going to be to find out how speakers implicate what they do. That’s what we’re going to do too.
Literal Meaning The literal meaning of a sentence is along the lines of its normal, dictionary-definition meaning. “I said she had good handwriting. I didn’t literally say that she was a bad philosopher.”
What Is Said Grice says that what a speaker says is closely related to what the literal meaning of the sentences the speaker utters.
What Is Said However, what a speaker says is not equivalent to the literal meaning of her utterance. We also must take into account the contributions of: (a) Resolutions of anaphora (b) The context of the utterance (c) Resolutions of ambiguity
“He is in the grip of a vice.” (a) We must resolve the anaphoric reference: who does the speaker mean by ‘he’?
“He is in the grip of a vice.” (b) We must determine the context of the utterance: if he “is” in the grip of a vice, what time was the present time when the speaker spoke?
“He is in the grip of a vice.” (c) We must resolve the ambiguity: does ‘in the grip of a vice’ mean here that he is caught in a certain kind of tool, or that he can’t rid himself of a bad character trait?
Conventional Implicature Grice argues that not all conventional meaning is literal meaning, and part of what is said. For example, if I say the sentence: “He is an Englishman; he is, therefore, brave,” I have implicated that all Englishmen are brave by using the word ‘therefore.’
Conventional Implicature • It is a matter of convention, Grice says, that using ‘therefore’ gives rise to an implicature. • If not all Englishmen were brave, what I said would nevertheless be true, if I had spoken of a brave Englishman. • I did not say that all Englishmen are brave; I only implicated it.
Cancelability An implicature is said to be cancelable if you can deny the implicature right after saying something that seems to implicate it. [Suppose again you’re applying to be a professor of philosophy and I write on your recommendation:] “She has good handwriting—and in addition, she’s a great philosopher.”
Detachability An implicature is detachable if you can rephrase what you just said in such a way that the new sentence has the same literal meaning, but doesn’t have the implicature. For instance, in the handwriting case, the implicature is NOT detachable: “She has good handwriting” “Her handwriting is good” “I’m impressed by her handwriting” etc.
Conventional Implicatures We can identify conventional implicatures with ones that are detachable and non-cancelable. Example: “Even Ken knows that’s stupid” Implicates: Ken is the least likely person (among some relevant group of people) to know that the action in question is stupid.
Example You can’t cancel the implicature: ??“Even Ken knows that’s stupid, but it’s not unusual or surprising that he does.” But you can detach it: “Ken knows that’s stupid too.”
Conventional Implicature? Although Grice believed in conventional implicatures, many linguists and philosophers don’t. Locus classicus: Kent Bach, “The Myth of Conventional Implicature”.
Conventional Implicatures? Conventional implicatures have been recently revived by Chris Potts, but most people think Potts is talking about something else.
Examples from Potts Epithets: “Those fucking kids won’t stay off my lawn.” Implicature: I have a negative attitude toward those kids. Non-restrictive relative clauses: “The pizza delivery boy, who was wearing a necktie, thanked me for the tip.”Implicature: he wore a necktie.
The Cooperative Principle In conversation, we don’t merely make random or disconnected remarks. Conversations have purposes: we engage in them for reasons. The purpose of a conversation can be introduced by a question or set of questions; it can also evolve as the conversation progresses.
The Cooperative Principle At each point in the conversation, certain “moves” (assertions, questions, etc.) will be “unsuitable”—that is, at odds with the purpose of the conversation.
The Cooperative Principle “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.”
Categories of Maxims The Cooperative Principle, according to Grice, gives rise to four categories of maxims (rules), that must be obeyed if conversation is to proceed cooperatively: the categories • Quantity • Quality • Relation • Manner
Category of Quantity Maxims Maxim 1: “Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange).” Maxim 2: “Do not make your contribution more than is required.”
Category of Quality Maxims Supermaxim (includes the others): “Try to make your contribution one that is true.” Maxim 1: “Do not say what you believe to be false.” Maxim 2: “Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.”
Category of Relation Maxims Maxim: “Be relevant.” Difficulties with elaborating on the maxim: • What are the different kinds of relevance? • How does what is relevant evolve with the conversation? • Why are some complete changes of topic acceptable? • Etc.
Category of Manner Maxims Supermaxim: “Be perspicuous.” Maxim 1: “Avoid ambiguity.” Maxim 2: “Avoid obscurity of expression.” Maxim 3: “Be brief.” Maxim 4: “Be orderly.”
Nonconversational Maxims Grice admits there are other maxims, such as “be polite,” that guide us in conversations. But he believes these maxims are not intimately related to the purposes of rational communication in the way that the maxims in the categories of quantity, quality, relation, and manner are.
Important Note! The maxims are not moral recommendations. Grice is not telling you that you have to be truthful, or that you ought not to be obscure. The maxims are a description of how we assume other people are behaving in cooperative speech. Why that assumption is warranted is a question Grice will try to answer.
NO “The maxims presuppose an almost Utopian level of gentlemanly conduct on the part of a speaker and an old-fashioned standard of truthfulness that George Washington might have found irksome. They remind one of the early Puritanism of the Royal Society…”
NO “A speaker should give not too much but just enough information, hold his tongue about what he believes to be false, or for which he has insufficient evidence, be relevant, be brief and orderly, avoid obscurity of expressions and ambiguity.”
NO “. . . Would we want to have dinner with such a person, such an impeccably polite maxim observer?”
Cooperative Endeavors, Generally Grice believes that the Cooperative Principle and the categories of maxims he outlines, extend to other cooperative human endeavors. Imagine that you and I are making a cake. There are some rules we should obey…
Quantity and Quality (Quantity) Make your contribution neither more nor less than is required. If I need a cup of sugar, don’t hand me half a cup; and don’t hand me 10 cups either. (Quality) Make your contribution “genuine and not spurious.” If I need a cup of sugar, don’t hand me a cup of salt.
Relation Make your contribution appropriate to the immediate needs at each stage of the cooperative endeavor. If I need a cup of sugar, don’t hand me an oven mitt (though do hand me it later when I need it); and don’t hand me an interesting book (though do when we’re preparing for a long plane flight).
