green numbers give full details | back to texts | unexpand these ideas
| 7752 | Only the utterer's primary intention is relevant to the meaning |
| Full Idea: Only what I may call the primary intention of an utterer is relevant to the (non-natural) meaning of an utterance. | |||
| From: H. Paul Grice (Meaning [1957], p.47) | |||
| A reaction: This sounds okay for simple statements, but gets really tricky with complex statements, such as very ironic remarks delivered to an audience of diverse people. |
| 7751 | Meaning needs an intention to induce a belief, and a recognition that this is the speaker's intention |
| Full Idea: For a statement to have (non-naturally) meant something, not merely must it have been 'uttered' with the intention of inducing a certain belief, but also the utterer must have intended an 'audience' to recognise the intention behind the utterance. | |||
| From: H. Paul Grice (Meaning [1957], p.43) | |||
| A reaction: This is Grice's famous and distinctive theory of meaning. I am struck by the problem of a password, which seems to have a quite different intention from its literal meaning. Also a speaker with two different audiences and opposite intentions. |
| 7753 | We judge linguistic intentions rather as we judge non-linguistic intentions, so they are alike |
| Full Idea: To show that the criteria for judging linguistic intentions are very like the criteria for judging non-linguistic intentions is to show that linguistic intentions are very like non-linguistic intentions. | |||
| From: H. Paul Grice (Meaning [1957], p.48) | |||
| A reaction: This hint at the end of his paper is one of the key attractions of Grice's view. It offers an account of language that fits it into the world of animal communication and evolution. It never seems to quite capture the way meaning goes beyond intentions. |