Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

Grice’s ideas about language have been extremely influential. His two central idea seem to be (i) that linguistic meaning (expression meaning) is based on speaker-meaning, which in turn is reducible to speaker intentions; and (ii) that distinguishing between what is said and what is implicated will facilitate a systematic account (and formal models) of expression meaning. In this paper, I want to review the merits of these key Gricean ideas. I shall argue that idea (i) is deeply problematic. On the other hand, idea (ii), or some version of it, continues (and should continue) to play a key role in semantics.