Grice's account of meaning

User Generated

GvzNezbb

Humanities

Description

What is the philosopher Grice's account of meaning? in the simplest terms?

User generated content is uploaded by users for the purposes of learning and should be used following Studypool's honor code & terms of service.

Explanation & Answer

Hence Grice begins with an attempt to isolate a particular kind of meaning, which he  calls ‘communicative meaning’, or ‘nonnatural meaning’ (meaningNN).  

NATURAL VS. NON-NATURAL MEANING  

Natural Meaning [“Noncognitive meaning”]  

“Those spots mean measles.” 

Nonnatural Meaning (MeaningNN) [“Communicative meaning”]  

“Those three rings on the bell mean that the bus is full.”  

Grice’s endeavor is to produce an account of meaningNN.  

Grice considers and rejects a causal account of meaningNN. 

Grice finds two things wrong with the causal account:  1. It omits the notion of intention. What needs to be specified is not the effect that  tends to be produced, but the effect that the speaker intends to produce.  

2. It concentrates on the idea of a standard meaning (of an expression or  utterance), and ignores what a particular speaker may mean on a particular  occasion.  

Grice further objects, more controversially, that the causal theory gets the priorities  between “utterance meaning” and “speaker meaning” backwards. That is, “the meaning  of a sign needs to be explained in terms of what users of the sign mean by it on  particular occasions” (p. 94).  

REFLEXIVE-INTENTION ACCOUNT  Grice develops his account in stages. 

Stage 1 introduces an intention. 

Stage 2 adds a  reflexive intention. Stage 3 introduces an additional reflexive intention connecting the  first intention to the intended effect on the hearer. 

reference 

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/grice/

http://www3.nd.edu/~jspeaks/courses/2007-8/93914/_HANDOUTS/grice.pdf

http://www.princeton.edu/~harman/Courses/PHI534-2012-13/Neale/NealeOnGrice.pdf



Anonymous
Really helpful material, saved me a great deal of time.

Studypool
4.7
Trustpilot
4.5
Sitejabber
4.4

Similar Content

Related Tags