Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T17:31:25.563Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Conversational implicature, communicative intentions, and content

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Ray Buchanan
Ray Buchanan*
Affiliation:
University of Texas, Austin
*
*Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

At the core of the Gricean account of conversational implicature is a certain assumption concerning the phenomenon that its proponents hope to explain and predict – namely, that conversational implicatures are, essentially, cases of speaker meaning. Heck (2006), however, has argued that once we appreciate a distinctive kind of indeterminacy characteristic of particularized implicatures, we must reject this assumption. Heck’s observation is that there are cases where it is clear a speaker has conversationally implicated something by her utterance, but where there is no particular proposition – other than what the speaker said – that we can plausibly take the speaker to have meant, or intended to communicate. I argue that although Heck’s observation is ultimately not in conflict with the core Gricean assumption, it is in tension with the widely held thesis that the things we mean and implicate are propositions. I sketch an alternative account of the things we mean and implicate – one that that accommodates the fact that in many cases of successful communicative exchanges, there is no particular proposition that the speaker intends to communicate.

Keywords

conversational implicaturecontentcommunicationmeaningpragmatics
Type
Theoretical Alternatives to Propositions
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 43 , Issue 5-6: Special issue: Essays on the Nature of Propositions , December 2013 , pp. 720 - 740
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Philosophy 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bach, K., and Harnish, M.. 1979. Linguistic Communication and Speech Acts. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Bach, K. 2011. “Meaning and Communication.” In Routledge Companion to the Philosophy of Language, edited by Fara, D. G. and Russell, G.. Routledge.Google Scholar
Bratman, M. 1987. Intention, Plans, and Practical Reason. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Buchanan, R. 2010. “A Puzzle about Meaning and Communication.” Noûs 44 (2): 340–371.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buchanan, R. 2012. “Meaning, Expression, and Evidence.” Thought 1 (2): 152–157.Google Scholar
Davis, W. A. 1998. Implicature: Intention, Convention, and Principle in the Failure of Gricean Theory. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, W. A. 2003. Meaning, Expression, and Thought. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Davis, W. A. 2013. “Meaning, Expression, and Indication: Reply to Buchanan.” Thought 2 (1): 62–66.Google Scholar
Davis, W. A. 2007. “How Normative is Implicature?” Journal of Pragmatics 39: 1655–1672.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grice, H. P. 1957. “Meaning.” Philosophical Review 66: 377–388.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grice, H. P. 1971. “Intention and Uncertainty.” Proceedings of the British Academy 5: 263–279.Google Scholar
Grice, H. P. 1989. Studies in the Way of Words. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Harman, G. 1976. “Practical Reasoning.” The Review of Metaphysics 29 (3): 431–463, Reprinted in The Philosophy of Action, Mele, A. (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1997: 149–177.Google Scholar
Heck, R. 2006. “Reason and Language.” In McDowell and his Critics, edited by Macdonald, C. and Macdonald, G., 22–45. Oxford: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holton, R. 2009. Willing, Wanting, Waiting. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holton, R. forthcoming. “Intention as a Model for Belief.” In Rational and Social Agency: Essays on the Philosophy of Michael Bratman, edited by Vargas, M. and Yaffe, G.. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Neale, S. 1992. “Paul Grice and the Philosophy of Language.” Linguistics and Philosophy 15: 509–559.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McDowell, J. 2006. “Response to Heck.” In McDowell and his Critics, edited by Macdonald, C. and Macdonald, G., 45–49. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Ross, J. 2009. “How to be a Cognitivist about Practical Reason.” Oxford Studies in Metaethics 4: 243–281.Google Scholar
Saul, J. 2001. “Review of Implicature: Intention, Convention, and Principle in the Failure of Gricean Theory by Wayne Davis.” Noûs 35: 630–641.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saul, J. 2002. “Speaker Meaning, What is Said, and What is Implicated.” Noûs 36: 228–248.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schiffer, S. 1972. Meaning. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Schiffer, S. 1982. “Intention-Based Semantics.” Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 23 (2): 119–156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schiffer, S. 1987. Remnants of Meaning. Bradford Books.Google Scholar
Setiya, Kieran. 2011. “Intention.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2011 Edition), edited by Zalta, Edward N., <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2011/entries/intention/>..>Google Scholar
Sperber, D., and Wilson, D.. 1986a. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. 2nd Ed. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Sperber, D., and Wilson, D.. 1986b. “Loose Talk.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 86: 153–171, Reprinted in S. Davis (ed.), Pragmatics: A Reader, pp. 540–549. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (1991).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sperber, D., and Wilson, D.. 1987. “Précis of Relevance: Communication and Cognition.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 10: 679–754.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sperber, D., and Wilson, D.. 1995. Relevance: Communication and Cognition. 2nd Ed.Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Sturgeon, S. 2008. “Reason and the Grain of Belief.” Noûs 42: 139–165.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Velleman, J. D. 1989. Practical Reflection. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar