Språkfilosofi I - Grice

What is said by an utterance

literal meaning, i.e. the compositionally determined truth conditional content of S

What is implicated

content that is distinct from the literal meaning but derivable after determining literal content

Conventional Implicature

Mandatory. Always triggers an implicature

Testing whether an implicature is conventional or non-conventional

Conventional meanings are not felicitously cancellable.

For example

“Jack is English, therefore Jack is brave. #Although I don’t mean to suggest that being English somehow entails being brave” doesn’t work since “therefore” leads to conventional implicature

Conversational implicature

result of speakers making certain assumptions about what it would be rational for agents to do in conversation.

Could felicitously be cancelled

The Cooperative Principle

Make your conversational contribution 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.

Quantity

2 Maxims:

1. Make your contribution as informative as is required.

2. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.

Quality

One supermaxim and two submaxims:

Supermaxim: Try to make your contribution one that is true.

1. Do not say what you believe to be false.

2. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence

Relation

One Maxim:

1. Be relevant

Manner

One supermaxim and four submaxims:

1. Avoid obscurity of expression.

2. Avoid ambiguity.

3. Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).

4. Be orderly.

Failing to Fulfill Maxims - 4 ways

1. Quiet Violations

2. Opting Out

3. Maxim Clash

4. Flouting Maxims

Quiet Violations

A speaker may quietly and unostentatiously violate (i.e. without making it explicit) one or more maxims. In such cases, the speaker is likely to mislead.

Opting Out

A speaker may voluntarily opt out of the Cooperative Principle and the maxims, e.g. in cases where the speaker is not at liberty to provide more information (‘I can’t say anymore’, ‘my lips are sealed’).

Maxim Clash

A speaker may face a clash of maxims. For example, the speaker might not have enough evidence to warrant a stronger assertion than one that is going to be insufficiently informative.

Flouting Maxims

A speaker may openly and blatantly fail to fulfill one or more maxims. These are cases that are most likely to give rise to conversational implicatures. In particular, the interlocutor is faced with the task of coming to reconcile the flouting of the maxim with the assumption that the speaker is still aiming to be cooperative.

a speaker S conversationally implicates that q (by saying p) iff:

1. It is assumed that S is observing the Cooperative Principle. (cooperative presumption)

2. The supposition that S believes that q is required to make S’s utterance consistent with the Cooperative Principle. (determinacy)

3. S believes (or knows), and expects the hearer H to believe that S believes, that H is able to determine that (ii) is true. (mutual knowledge)

To derive a conversational implicature q from an utterance of p, the hearer will generally need to rely on

1. The conventional meaning of the words and sentence.

2. The Cooperative Principle and the associated maxims.

3. The context in which p is uttered.

4. Other kinds of background/world knowledge.

5. The assumption that 1-4 are available to both speaker and audience.

Scalar implicature

The idea is that ‘some’, ‘most’, and ‘every’ belong to a scale

Particularized Implicature

Highly context-dependent. For example, the implicature generated by the sentence ‘Mr. X’s command of English is excellent’ is essentially dependent on the context. This sentence would not give rise to this implicature generally.

Generalized Implicature

Not generally context-dependent. In definite descriptions, e.g. ‘a woman’, ‘a house’ quite generally implicate some kind of lack of familiarity. For example, a sentence such as ‘John is meeting a woman tonight’ would generally implicate that John is not meeting his wife.