2 - Natural and non-natural meaning

Summary

Take Bach's Well Temper'd Clavier. To me it means molecular harmony. To my father, it means a broken sewing machine. To Bach, it meant money to pay the candlemaker.

(David Mitchell – number9dream)

GRICEAN MEANING_nn

Among the ghosts that haunt the corridors of departments that profess (and foster) an interest in pragmatics, there are a great many philosophers of language. Though with the passing of time the influence of some of these has faded, there can be little doubt that the spirit of Paul Grice continues to exert a powerful influence. Not only was his work among the most influential in laying the foundations for much of modern pragmatics, but his insights continue to provoke debate (and controversy). We may owe the term ‘pragmatics’ to Charles Morris (1938), but Grice certainly ranks highly among a select few to whom credit is due for shaping (and continuing to shape) the discipline as we know it today.

To pragmatists, indeed linguists generally, Grice is remembered best for his Theory of Conversation, outlined in the William James Lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1967. But whilst this is a book with its roots firmly in pragmatics, it is another area of Grice's work – his Theory of Meaning, first outlined in his paper ‘Meaning’ (1957) – that is the focus of this chapter.