On the Gricean Program about Meaning

On the Gricean Program about MeaningAuthor(s): Paul YuSource: Linguistics and Philosophy, Vol. 3, No. 2 (1979), pp. 273-288Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25001021 .

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PAUL YU

ON THE GRICEAN PROGRAM

ABOUT MEANING*

Grice and those philosophers who accept Grice's overall program about

meaning have published only a small number of books and papers on that subject. Still they have had, despite continual criticisms from several fronts, wide influence (especially among philosophers and theoretical linguists). Because I think that the Gricean program really is

fundamentally mistaken, and because I think I can bring out the nature of the mistakes in a perspicuous way-a way which, though obviously indebted to previous critiques,' differs from them in important respects I propose now to offer yet another critical examination of the Gricean

program about meaning. To avoid excessive complications, particularly those which in my judgment are not germane to the issues I am raising, I

shall in general not be concerned with differences in opinion among Griceans about detailed points nor with extreme refinements in their

formulations.

I

What is the Gricean program about meaning? In very general terms, Griceans believe that we can distinguish between speaker meaning, viz. what a speaker means by what he utters, and sentence meaning, viz. what a sentence means. Sentence meaning, so the Gricean account runs, is to be explicated, or analyzed or elucidated in terms of speaker

meaning, which is logically prior or conceptually more basic. Speaker meaning is to be explicated in turn in terms of intention, which is

conceptually still more basic.2 Thus Grice writes:

Starting with the assumption that the notion of an utterer's occasion-meaning can be explicated, in a certain way, in terms of an utterer's intentions, I argue in support of the thesis that timeless meaning and applied timeless meaning can be explicated in terms of the notion of utterer's occasion-meaning (together with other notions), and so ultimately in terms of the notion of intention.3

By "utterer's occasion-meaning" Grice here refers to speaker meaning, and both "timeless meaning" and "applied timeless meaning" refer to sentence meaning. The difference is that when we specify (a) timeless

meaning of a sentence we are specifying a meaning it has (where 'has' is

* I would like to thank two anonymous referees for this journal for helpful comments on

earlier versions of this paper.

Linguistics and Philosophy 3 (1979) 273-288. 0165-0157/79/0032-0273 $01.60 Copyright ? 1979 by D. Reidel Publishing Company



274 PAUL YU

tenseless), whereas when we specify (an) applied timeless meaning of a sentence we are specifying the timeless meaning it has on a particular occasion. Similarly, Schiffer claims that the notion of speaker meaning he calls it 'S-meaning'-is logically prior to that of sentence meaning; he writes: "... an account of S-meaning may be taken as primary and an account of utterance-type/token meaning provided in terms of this

primary account ...".4 Schiffer then offers what is substantially Grice's

analysis of speaker meaning in terms of intention. As a third example, consider the following statements by Bennett:

So now we can have a meaning-nominalist account of language, that is, one which treats as basic the individual instance of meaning, by one speaker at one time, and gives a derivative status to every kind of general statement about meanings ....

The seminal idea which I take from Grice incorporates the view that meaning is a kind of intending.5

Finally, speaking approvingly of the Gricean program-he calls Griceans 'theorists of communication-intention'-Strawson has the following to say about what it is to be a Gricean:

... first, present and elucidate a primitive concept of communication (or communication intention) in terms which do not presuppose the concept of linguistic meaning; then show that the latter concept can be, and is to be, explained in terms of the former. For any theorist who follows this path, the fundamental concept in the theory of meaning is that of a speaker's, or, generally, an utterer's meaning something by an audience-directed utterance on a particular occasion.6

The first thing to notice is that the nature of the Gricean proposal is far from clear. That is, the Gricean program is evidently a very general

thesis about language, but it is difficult to say much beyond that. In order for us to assess it responsibly, however, we have to get clearer about

just what thesis it is. Let me now draw some distinctions and bring out

some basic assumptions. To begin with, we can distinguish at least two kinds of general theses about language: an account of the genesis of

language-an account of how language came into being in the course of

human history, and an account of the knowledge or possession of

language-an account of what it is for an organism to know or have a

language.7 The Gricean program, would seem, is a thesis of the second

sort. To my knowledge, this is certainly how it has been viewed by all its

critics.8

Consider then the question: what is it for an organism to know or have

a language? A general answer to which Chomsky has given currency is : for an organism to know or have a language is for him to know or master

(in some suitable sense) a set of rules for mapping sounds into (sen tence) meanings and conversely. Exactly what Chomsky means by this



ON THE GRICEAN PROGRAM ABOUT MEANING 275

and what he should mean by this are deep and well known controver sies.9 We can skirt those issues, however, since it suffices for our

present purposes to show that Griceans accept this answer in broad outline. Thus Grice writes:

We can, if we are lucky, identify 'linguistic rules', so called, which are such that our

linguistic practice is as if we accepted these rules and consciously followed them. But we want to say that this is not just an interesting fact about our linguistic practice, but an

explanation of it; and this leads us on to suppose that 'in some sense', 'implicity', we do

accept these rules.'?

Strawson is more explict. He writes:

... knowledge of a language consists ... [in the mastery of the system of semantic and syntactical rules]-... rules which determine the meanings of sentences ... the meanings of the sentences of a language are largely determined by the semantic and syntactic rules or conventions of that language."

In brief, even though there are obviously deep an unresolved questions about the Chomskian view, questions about what it is for an organism to know implicitly the rules of his language, rules which determine mean

ings of the elements, it is not unjust to think of Griceans as accepting something like this general view. The Gricean program on meaning, then, is an account of sentence meaning and ultimately, in a way yet to be made clear, an account (or a partial account) of what it is for an

organism to have a language. With this understanding, let us now turn to an examination of the program.

II

In their writings Griceans characterize themselves as producing expli cations (or analyses, or elucidations) of certain notions in terms of other notions. But they neglect to say what an explication is. This is un fortunate since the notion of explication-the same goes for the notions of analysis, elucidation, etc.-is too problematic and unclear to bear the burden placed thereon. Let me clarify this.

To begin with, it seems reasonable to regard the Griceans as making (at least) the following two claims: (i) there exist necessary and sufficient conditions for sentence meaning in terms of speaker meaning and also

necessary and sufficient conditions for speaker meaning in terms of

intention; (ii) the notion of intention is conceptually more basic than or

logically prior to the notion of speaker meaning, just as the notion of

speaker meaning is conceptually more basic than that of sentence

meaning. But (ii) is problematic, since the notion of conceptual primacy (or logical priority) is notoriously problematic. There is, to be sure, a



276 PAUL YU

tradition in philosphy which takes philosophy as conceptual analysis and

regards such notions as analysis, conceptual primacy, etc. as entirely clear. But I suspect that this tradition is not altogether honorable.

'Conceptually basic', for instance, cannot be indentified with 'theoretic

ally primitive', since in general when we formulate a theory we have a choice as to which notions to take as primitive. But let us waive this

objection. Assuming that we are correct in construing the Gricean

program as ultimately an account of what it is for an organism to have a

language, we can view the Gricean explication talk as the issuance of a

promissory note, to the effect that after the total theory is completed it will be seen that it is best to define 'sentence meaning' in terms of

'speaker meaning' and 'speaker meaning' in terms of 'intention'. A crucial unclarity about the notion of explication, however, still

remains. As I shall try to show, this unclarity has quite important consequence. The point is this. 'Explication' is sometimes used to refer to a characterization (and perhaps also some refinement) of a pre-existing notion. Sometimes, however, an explication may be entirely stipulative, introducing thereby a novel and technical notion. If we call the former

reportive explications and the latter stipulative explications, then we can formulate the important difference between them as follows: whereas in the reportive case the explicans has to characterize (more or less) correctly a pre-existing notion, in the stipulative case the explicans does not have to meet any such condition of adequacy. Griceans, I claim, vacillate between these two notions of explication when it comes to

speaker meaning. Before I document this claim, let me first record the Gricean explication of speaker meaning. As I have already mentioned, I shall try to simplify the discussion, hopefully without affecting any of the principal points, by ignoring excessive refinements and detailed differences among Griceans. We have first, then, the following Gricean

explication of speaker meaning in terms of intention:

by uttering sentence x a speaker U means something iff

(1) for some audience A, U intended his utterance of x to

produce in A some effect (response) E, by means of A's

recognition of that intention.'2

For convenience we can, following Grice, abbreviate the explicans in (1) as 'for some audience A, U M-intended to produce in A effect E'. Now

what sorts of things can a speaker mean by producing an utterance?

According to Griceans, two things (possibly the only two in the final

analysis) which can be meant are meaning that p (exemplified by utterances of indictive-type sentences) and meaning that A is to do X




(exemplified by utterances of imperative-type sentences). The Gricean

explications for these two species of speaker meaning are as follows:

by uttering x, U meant that p iff

(1A) for some audience A, U M-intended his utterance of x to

produce in A the belief that p.13

by uttering x, U meant that A is to do X iff

(1B) for some audience A, U M-intended that his utterance of x should get A to do X.

Let me now try to show that Griceans waver between two attitudes towards these explications: sometimes they treat (1), (1A), and (1B) as

reportive explications, so that it is important and pointful to examine

putative counterexamples; at other times they treat these explications as

stipulative explications, so that the conditions in the explicans are criterial.'4 Consider first, then, a famous counterexample advanced by Searle against the Gricean explication (1A). Searle writes:

Suppose that I am an American soldier in the Second World War and that I am captured

by Italian Troops. And suppose also that I wish to get these troops to believe that I am a German soldier in order to get them to release me. What I would like to do is to tell them

in German or Italian that I am a German soldier. But let us suppose I don't know enough German or Italian to do that. So I, as it were, attempt to put on a show of telling them that

I am a German soldier by reciting those few bits of German I know, trusting that they don't know enough German to see through my plan. Let us suppose I know only one line of German which I remember from a poem I had to memorize in a high school German

course. Therefore, I, a captured American, address my Italian captors with the following sentence: Kennst du das Land wo die Zitronen bluhen?'5

This case, Searle say, clearly fulfills the Gricean explicans in (1A), and

yet (so Searle claims) surely by uttering the German sentence the American soldier did not thereby mean that he was a German soldier. There can be little doubt, I think, that Searle is treating (1A) as a

reportive explication, for otherwise the attempt to construct a coun

terexample is senseless. It is now instructive to study how Griceans

respond to Searle's argument. Niceties aside, Schiffer replies that, as

long as the explicans in (1A) is satisfied in Searle's example, the American soldier does mean that he is a German soldier by his

utterance.16 Bennett replies that, since one cannot intend something without believing that there is a reasonable chance for success, the American soldier cannot really have the intention (as Searle claims) of

inducing in the Italian soldiers the belief that he is a German soldier, since the chances of success are clearly remote, so that Searle's example cannot be actualized. 17 Unless I misread Bennett, this suggests that in



278 PAUL YU

his view if the American soldier had the relevant intention then he would have meant that he was a German soldier. Both Schiffer and

Bennett, then, treat the explicans in (1A) as criterial; that is, they treat

(1A) as a stipulative explication. Presumably this is how they view

explications (1) and (1B) as well. I shall have occasion to discuss Searle's example further below.

Meanwhile, however, I want to show that Griceans do not consistently view (1), (1A), and (1B) as stipulative explications. Instead, sometimes

they treat these explications as attempts to characterize (and to refine) a

pre-existing notion of speaker meaning. The best way to appreciate this is to examine what Griceans have to say about cases where there is no

audience. Even though we have so far no very good idea of what the

Gricean notion of speaker meaning is, it should be clear to anyone who

reads (1), (1A), and (1B) that, if the conditions stated in the explicans really were criterial, then there could be no speaker meaning - U would not have meant anything by what he uttered-in at least some of the

audienceless cases.s1 If the conditions really were criterial, for example, then if George were to utter 'this is an incredible view' when hiking alone on a Grand Canyon trail, without any thought of either producing a belief in anyone (himself included) or getting someone (himself in

cluded) to do something, he would not thereby have meant anything. The fact that Griceans regard such cases as problems, as cases which the

explications of speaker meaning should include but do not, shows that at least sometimes they view their explications (1,) (1A), and (IB) as

reportive explications. In Schiffer, indeed, the existence of these

conflicting attitudes is not even well concealed. Thus after describing some audienceless cases Schiffer writes:

What should we say about these examples? ... We might simply deny that we have here instances of S meaning that p by uttering x.... However, I fear that taking this way out

would not win many converts, and for at least this reason I shall henceforth assume that we do want to say of these cases that in uttering x [U] meant that p. Another reason for dismissing this hard line is that there is some inclination to say that [U] meant that p, and this is worth accounting for.19

On the one hand, Schiffer would like to regard (1), (la) and (1B) as

stipulative. On the other hand, he finds his intuition about audienceless cases hard to dismiss. He does finally opt for the reportive view, but the

struggle is obvious, and the vacillation (as we have already observed) remains. This vacillation is clearly pernicious. At the least, it makes clear discussion of the Gricean program difficult. In fact, as I shall try to

show, it has led many critics to focus on the wrong part of the Gricean

program.20 Before I turn to that, however I propose to say what notion



ONTHE GRICEAN PROGRAM ABOUT MEANING 279

of speaker meaning it is that (1), (1A), and (1B)-whether reportively or

stipulatively-are trying to characterize.

III

What exactly is the notion of speaker meaning-call it for convenience the official Gricean notion of speaker meaning-characterized by (1), (1A), and (1B)? This is not an easy question to answer. Let me begin by considering a discussion by Ziff. Ziff asks us to consider the following situation:

On being inducted into the army, George is compelled to take a test designed to establish sanity. George is known to be an irritable academic. The test he is being given would be

appropriate for morons. One of the questions asked is: 'What would you say if you were asked to identify yourself?' George replied to the officer asking the question by uttering (3): (3) Ugh ugh blugh blugh ugh blug blug.2'

George's utterance (3), Ziff claims, clearly fulfills the explication (1) for official Gricean speaker meaning, and yet

... it is ... clear that George did not mean anything by (3). Grice seems to have conflated and confused 'A meant something by uttering x', which is true in a case like (3), with the

quite different 'A meant something by x', which is untrue in a case like (3).22

How can Ziff be so sure that George did not mean anything by (3)? The most plausible explanation, given what he says, is that Ziff assumes that there is only one pre-existing notion of speaker meaning, of the notion

of what U meant by uttering x, and that that notion is

what x meant as U uttered it,

a notion which is clearly not captured by any of the Gricean explications (1), (1A), or (1B). In this, indeed, Ziff and Searle are in agreement. In Searle's American soldier example Searle's certainty that the American soldier did not mean that he was a German soldier by his utterance also

seems to be predicated on the assumption that there is only one

pre-existing notion of speaker meaning, one that the Gricean expli cations fail to capture, viz.

what x meant as U uttered it.

Various objections can be raised against Ziff's and Searle's arguments. First of all, as I shall show presently, there are other common notions of

speaker meaning. Secondly, I shall argue later, whether Grice's expli cations in fact succeed in capturing some important pre-existing notion of speaker meaning is quite unimportant. Finally, it may be doubted



280 PAUL YU

whether the notion of what x meant as U uttered it is a notion of

speaker meaning at all. Griceans would certainly argue, and they seem to be right in this, that what Ziff and Searle have is a notion of sentence

meaning.23 I shall pursue this discussion no further, however, since my concern is rather to say what the official Gricean notion of speaker meaning is. Before I speculate what the official notion of speaker meaning can be, it will be useful to distinguish it from another notion, viz. what U really thinks about the situation. This is perhaps, if there is such a thing at all, the common notion of speaker meaning, of what a

speaker means by an utterance. Thus, consider the case where A says of C 'he's happy', thinking that C knows no better. Here one might well

say that what A meant by his utterance was that C knew no better.

Again consider the case where A says of C 'he's selfish', thinking that C is self-abosrbed. Here again one is inclined to say that what A meant by his utterance was that C is self-absorbed.24 Yet neither of these cases needs to be a case of official Gricean speaker meaning. In the first case, for example, A may not care whether he produces in his audience the belief that C knows no better. And in the second case A is too confused to have the relevant intention. There may be still other notions of speaker meaning which are distinct from the official Gricean one. But it is time that I state my positive hypothesis, which is this: The official Gricean notion of speaker meaning is that of communicative intent or communicative attempt. More pre cisely, the official notion of speaker meaning can be stated as follows:

(2) by uttering x U meant something = by uttering x U intended to communicate something to some audience A.

(Analogously for 'by uttering xU meant that p' and 'by uttering x U

meant that A is to do X'.) This hypothesis is certainly now new.25 The

question is, is it true? Well, hypothesis (2) is certainly consistent with our results so far. For example, it explains why audienceless cases would constitute a problem. But we can do much better than indirect evidence,

since some Griceans have pretty much stated (2) in so many words.

Thus, Strawson writes that "Grice's analysis is undoubtedly offered as an analysis of a situation in which one person is trying, in a sense of the

word 'communicate' fundamental to any theory of meaning, to com municate with another."26 The reason why this notion of speaker mean

ing is important when we are developing a general account of what it is

for an organism to have a language, according to Griceans, is that the

basic and essential function of language is communication.27 Actually this thesis, that the essential function of language is communication, is




far from obvious. Thus, it is not at all clear why thinking is not at least as essential a function of language as communication. And there may be

indefinitely more functions of language to be considered. Furthermore, even if we agree that in some way the essential function of language is

communication, it would not follow that we should take the notion of

speaker meaning as primitive in a general account of language posses sion. That needs independent argument. These issues, however, though clearly relevant and important, are beyond the scope of this paper. I shall content myself with showing the Gricean program to be mistaken, and leave the tasks of criticizing foundational Gricean assumptions and of offering an alternative account to others.28

I can now offer an explanation of why Griceans waver between the

reportive and the stipulative view of (1), (1A), and (iB). On the one hand, on the basis of certain foundational assumptions, Griceans view the notion of speaker meaning embodied in (2), roughly, communicative intent or attempt, as the basic notion in terms of which we should

develop a general account of what it is for an organism to have a

language. On the other hand, they find their intuition that in all audienceless cases one means something by what one utters hard to

deny.29 One of the continuing projects for Griceans, indeed, is to modify (1), (1A), and (iB), in such a way that they are at once faithful to (2) and

yet at the same time allows to say that there is speaker meaning in all the

audienceless cases. It should be clear that such a project must inevitably fail. The official Gricean notion of speaker meaning, viz. (2), essentially involves communicative intent or attempt. On the other hand, whatever notion of speaker meaning that allows us to say that there is speaker meaning in all the audienceless cases must not essentially involve communicative intent or attempt. (Recall, for example, the case of the hiker discussed earlier.)

Actually, from the point of view of their overall project, which is (I surmised earlier) to produce a general account of language possession,

Griceans need not be disturbed by the foregoing analysis, since they have the option of explicitly recognizing their official notion of speaker meaning as a stipulative notion. They must, of course, abandon their intuition about audienceless cases. But that is all right. The proof of the

pudding, after all, is in the eating. Griceans need only show that they can

produce a plausible account of sentence meaning and language posses sion in terms of the official notion of speaker meaning. Where that notion comes from is of no importance. Still, if this really is the best rational reconstruction of the Gricean program, then their vacillation between the reportive and the stipulative view of the official notion of



PAUL YU

speaker meaning has had momentous consequences, since that has led most commentators to focus their criticisms on the wrong part of the Gricean program, viz. their explication of speaker meaning. If our

analysis so far is sound, however, the proper part of the program to scrutinize is clearly the Gricean explication of sentence meaning. To that

we now turn.

IV

How do Griceans explicate sentence meaning in terms of speaker meaning? Principally, by appealing to a notion of convention developed by David Lewis.3 According to Lewis

... a regulatity R, in action or in action and belief, is a convention in a population P if and only if, within P, the following six conditions hold....

(1) Everyone conforms to R. (2) Everyone believes that the others conform to R. (3) This belief that the others conform to R gives everyone a good and decisive reason to

conform to R himself. ... (4) There is a general preference for general conformity ... (5) R is not the only possible regularity meeting the last two conditions.... (6) Finally, the various facts listed in conditions (1) to (5) are matters of common (or

mutual) knowledge: they are known to everyone, it is known to everyone that they are known to every one, and so on.

31

It should be clear why Lewis's account of convention should appeal to Griceans. Griceans, we conjectured earlier, accept in broad outline the Chomskian view of language possession. That is, they think that for an

organism to know or have a language is for him to know a set of rules

which determine the meanings of the sentences of the language. Lewis's account of convention incorporates the notion of knowledge. More

importantly, it provides an illuminating explication of the notion of rule in terms of the less problematic notions of knowledge and regularity, and promises to bridge the gap between individual cases of speaker meaning and systematic or regular sentence meaning. Lewis's account, of course, has interesting problems of its own.32 For the purposes of this

paper, however we shall only be interested in how Griceans employ Lewis's account of convention to produce an explication of sentence

meaning in terms of speaker meaning.33 We find, roughly speaking, two somewhat different proposals:

sentence x means 'p' in L iff

(3A) there is a convention among L-speakers that, for any

L-speaker U, if U utters x, then U means that p(= U M

intends to produce in some audience the belief that p.)




and


(3B) there is a convention among L-speakers that, for any L

speaker U, if U means that p (= U M-intends to produce in some audience the belief that p,) then U utters X.34

Unlike the Gricean explications (1), (1A), and (1B), where speaker meaning is explicated in terms of intention, Griceans do not have the

option of viewing (3A) and (3B) as stipulative explications. This is why it was important to ascertain the nature of the Gricean program in section I. Assuming that I am correct in construing the Griceans attempting to construct a theory (or a partial theory) of what it is for an organism to have a language, it would be permissible for them to introduce a

stipluated notion of speaker meaning and then try to show that a

plausible thoery of language possession can be constructed by taking this notion as primitive. Clearly, however, they are not permitted to treat the notion of sentence meaning the same way. That notion, along with

what ever plausible generalizations we can formulate in terms of it, are

part of the phenomena to be accounted for. The overall constraints on a

theory of language possession are admittedly obscure. But if one thinks that there is something to the notion of (sentence) meaning at all-there are theorists who deny this, but Griceans are not among them-one is committed to producing a theory which is consistent with plausible generalizations about (sentence) meaning. Let us now turn to a critical examination of (3A) and (3B).

The condition in the explicans of (3A) is clearly not necessary. Thus, consider again the case of the lone hiker who utters 'this is an incredible view' while on a Grand Canyon trail. Suppose that he utters the sentence without any intentions of either producing a belief in anyone (himself included) or getting someone (himself included) to do something. The sentence he utters clearly has a meaning in English. But it is vastly implausible to suggest that by uttering the sentence this way the hiker has violated a convention in Lewis's sense. Certainly the hiker does not believe that he is expected to conform, nor do other English speakers expect him to conform, to the regularity 'utter "this is an incredible view" only if you M-intend that ....'. It should be noted that Griceans themselves find (3A) defective, since x may be multivocal. But that is a concern which is very different from mine. As I see it, revising (3A) to read '... if U utters x, then U means either that p or that q or .. .' does

not help where my objection is concerned. In my view the defect of (3A) is not multivocality but the implausible (and unargued for) requirement



284 PAUL YU

of communicative intention. Can Griceans say anything in response to this criticism? One move they can make, perhaps the only one, is to give up the claim of actual intentions and retreat instead to hypothetical intentions. That is, they may propose the following in place of (3A):


(3A') there is a convention among L-speakers that, for any speaker U and any audience A, if U utters x to A, then U means that

p( = U M-intends to produce the belief that p in A).

This formulation would accommodate the lone hiker case, but we now come to a deeper objection against the Gricean account of sentence

meaning. One of the earlier complaints about the Gricean program is

that, according to it, one could seemingly utter any sentence and mean

anything one wishes thereby , so long as one had the right intentions. But that would seem to make it impossible for sentences of a language to have determinate meanings, as they in fact do. Griceans have res

ponded to this criticism by arguing that the plasticity of speaker meaning is quite compatible with the rigidity of sentence meaning, since sen tences of a language are regularly (= roughly, conventionally) associated

with certain specific intentions. Thus, although one could, under rather unusual circumstances, utter 'this is warm' and mean thereby that this is

cold, it is still the case that in ordinary circumstances one who utters

'this is warm' means thereby that this is warm. All this is well and good. But it then follows that there must exist constraint on sentences of a

language L, constraints which limit the kind of (hypothetical) intentions one can have when one utters sentences of L under ordinary circum

stances. In brief, (3A') needs to be expanded like this:


(3A") there is a convention among L-speakers that, for any speaker U and any audience A, if U utters x to A, where x is such

that , then U means that p.

But what kind of constraints can be put on sentences of L to insure that

L-speakers who utter sentences of L would as a regular matter have the

right kind of (hypothetical) intentions? The obvious answer is: the

meaning of the sentence. If so, the Gricean account of sentence meaning would be flatly circular.35 What this suggests, though I shall not argue for it in this paper, is that the kind of knowledge suggested by Griceans as the knowledge involved in language possession is wrong. What is needed is not, as Griceans suggest, knowledge of communicative intentions.

What is needed is rather knowledge of meanings of sentences, a knowledge




which may be used for various purposes, including communication. In

deed, upon closer scrutiny the Gricean proposal appears to be not so much an account of language as an account of communication.6 Al

though a theory of language is undoubtedly intimately related to a theory of communication, the two accounts are not the same. We have already observed that one can use language without attempting to communicate.

Equally, as Griceans would certainly agree, one can communicate without using language. Clearly, quite parallel arguments apply to (3B). Note once more that Griceans themselves regard (3B) as defective, since there may exist more than one sentence with which one can com

municate that p. But again, that concern is quite different from mine. As I see it, revising (3B) to read '... if U means that p, then U utters x or y or ...' does nothing against my objection. What I find objectionable about (3B) is not the possibility of a multiplicity of communicative devices which serve to communicate the same belief, but the implausible (and unargued for) insistence on the existence of communicative in tention.

Let me recapitulate briefly. Griceans, I contend, are best construed as attempting to construct a theory of sentence meaning, which they view as an important part of a general account of what it is for an

organism to have a language. If we ignore, as I do, what Griceans have

to say about word meaning, then the Gricean program about meaning has two principal stages: an explication of speaker meaning in terms of

intention, and then an explication of sentence meaning in terms of

speaker meaning. Griceans, so I argue, vacillate between two different attitudes towards their explication of speaker meaning: sometimes they regard it as reportive, and sometimes they regard it as stipulative. The reason for this vacillation, I speculate, is that Griceans want at once to

construe speaker meaning as essentially communicative intent or

attempt and to do justice to the intuition that there is speaker meaning in all audienceless cases. I argue that these aims are incompatible, since

some audienceless cases are such that there is precisely no com municative intent or attempt. I then observe that, so long as Griceans are

willing to recognize explicitly the stipulative character of their expli cation of speaker meaning, they are free to go on to try to show that a

plausible theory of sentence meaning (and ultimately a plausible theory of language possession) can be developed on that basis. Still, the vacillation on the part of Griceans has had an important consequence, since it has led many commentators to focus on the wrong part of the

Gricean program. Given my rational reconstruction of that program, we should examine critically not the explication of speaker meaning (as



286 PAUL YU

many critics do), but the explication of sentence meaning. I then try to show that the Gricean explications of sentence meaning are implausible. Finally I suggest that the Gricean program is not a theory of language so much as a theory of communication.

Central Michigan University

NOTES

There are many excellent critical discussions of the Gricean program too many to mention here. The discussion which has been for me the most illuminating and informative is chapter 2 of N. Chomsky's Reflections on Language, New York: Pantheon Books, 1975. 2 Actually, Griceans also have an account of word meaning, an account with problems of its own. I shall not, however, consider word meaning in this paper. 3 H. P. Grice, 'Utterer's Meaning and Intentions', Philosophical Review 78, 2 (April, 1969) 150. See note 22. 4 S. Schiffer, Meaning, Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1972, p. 13.

J. Bennett, Linguistic Behaviour, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976, pp. 9, 11. See also section 5. 6 P. F. Strawson, 'Meaning and Truth', in Logico-Linguistic Papers, London: Methuen &

Company, 1971, p.172. 7 By speaking thus generally about language I am, of course, begging important questions

about the nature of actual and possible languages. I do not propose to examine that issue in this paper, though I am aware that in so doing I may have overlooked matters important for our current discussion. 8 Some Griceans have on occasion viewed the Gricean program also as a genetic account and have thought, so it appears to me, that its plausibility as a genetic account lends it plausibility as an anlytic account. See particularly Strawson, 'Meaning and Truth', pp. 173 6. 9 The literature on these issues is much too large to cite here. For a recent discussion see

my 'Grammar and Understanding', forthcoming in the Canadian Journal of Philosophy. 'o H. P. Grice, 'Utterer's Meaning, Sentence-Meaning, and Word-Meaning', Foundations

of Language 4 (1968); reprinted in J. Searle (ed.), The Philosophy of Language, London: Oxford University Press, 1971, p.69. See note 30. " 'Meaning and Truth', pp. 171, 176. 12 This and the two which follow are roughly the formulations found in Grice's earliest

paper on his program 'Meaning', Philosophical Review, 66 (1957). Since then various Griceans have proposed a number of revisions and reformulations. See particularly Grice, 'Utterer's Meaning and Intentions', pp. 175-6; 'Utterer's Meaning, Sentence-Meaning, and

Word-Meaning', pp. 58-9; Schiffer, Meaning, pp. 63, 75-6; and Bennett, Linguistic Behavior, section 53. I contend that those revisions and reformulations do not affect the principal points which I wish to make. '1 I shall not raise in this context the admittedly important question of the legitimacy of

quantifying over propositions into such opaque contexts as 'mean that' and 'intend that'. 14 To forestall a possible misunderstanding, let me note that to say that a notion is

stipulated and technical is not to say that it is in no way controvertible. In the present instance the Gricean notion of speaker meaning is taken by Griceans, for example, to apply to both linguistic and nonlinguistic utterances. This claim, that there is something speaker meaning-which (i) applies to both linguistic and nonlinguistic utterances and (ii) figures importantly in a general account of sentence meaning and language possession, is




not at all obvious. But of course considerations against that claim, with the notion of

speaker meaning taken as either reportive or stipulative, are not considerations against (1), (1A) and (1B) as reportive explications. ' J. Searle, Speech Acts, London: Cambridge University Press, 1969, p. 44. 16 Meaning, p. 28. '' Linguistic Behavior, p. 92. 8 Why some rather than all audienceless cases? Because by 'audience' we refer to actual

rather than intended audience, and because we do not regard the speaker himself as his own (actual) audience. Although plausible examples may be difficult to construct, it does not seem impossible for a person U to utter x and M-intend his utterance of x to produce some belief either in some person who is not actually present or in himself. For some discussions of audienceless cases by Griceans see Grice, 'Utterer's Meaning and In tentions', pp. 174-7, and Schiffer, Meaning, pp. 73-80. 19

Meaning, p. 77.

o2 It may be objected that I am being unfair when I claim that Griceans vacillate between a

reportive view and a stipulative view of speaker meaning since not all Griceans vacillate. There is, for example, no clear evidence that Grice himself does. To this objection I have the following response. Since I am interested in a general evaluation of the Gricean program, I am content if I can make out a resonable case, as I think I do, that important Griceans (such as Bennett and Schiffer) vacillate in the way I describe. And, though Grice himself may not vacillate, neither does he clearly opt for the reportive stance or the stipulative stance. This omission sufficies to mislead important critics (such as Searle and, as we shall presently see, Ziff) concerning the nature of the program. 21 P. Ziff, 'On H. P. Grice's Account of Meaning', Analysis 28, 1 (Oct. 1967); reprinted in J. Rosenberg and C. Travis (eds.), Readings in the Philosophy of Language, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1971, p. 445.

2Ibid., p. 446, my italics. 3 Grice quite explicitly distinguishes the notion of speaker meaning, viz.

what U meant by uttering x from the notion of

what x meant as U uttered it.

He calls the latter 'applied timeless meaning' of the sentence x. See Grice, 'Utterer's

Meaning, Sentence-Meaning, and Word-Meaning', p. 56, and 'Utterer's Meaning and Intentions', pp. 147-50. >4 I owe this last example to Marilyn Frye's paper 'Force and Meaning', Journal of

Philosophy, 70, 10 (May 24, 1973) 286. It is not clear, however, that she uses the example to make the same point I do. 25 See N. Chomsky, Reflections on Language, p. 68 and N. L. Wilson, 'Grice on Meaning: the Ultimate Counterexample'. Nois 4, 3 (Sept. 1970) 298-302. 26 Intention and Convention in Speech Acts', in Logico-Linguistic Papers, p. 156. Bennett, citing Strawson, Makes essentially the same point on p. 126 of Linguistic Behavior. 27 This is the central thesis of Strawson's paper 'Meaning and Truth'. Bennett echoes the thesis on p. 210 of Linguistic Behavior. Searle, who from the point of this debate may be viewed as a Gricean, makes essentially the same claim in 'Chomsky's Revolution in

Lingusitics', The New York Review of Books, 1972; reprinted in G. Harman (ed.), On Noam Chomsky: Critical Essays, New York: Anchors Books, 1974, pp. 16, 29-30. 28 For a penetrating critique of foundational Gricean assumptions see Chomsky, Reflections on Language, pp. 54-72. See also G. Harman, 'Language, Thought, and Communication', in K. Gunderson (ed.), Language, Mind, and Knowledge, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1975. 29 It proves instructive, though no Gricean appears to have done so, to ask why there is

this undeniable intuition. One plausible suggestion-by no means the only one-is surely that

even in audienceless case utterances of sentences will at least express thoughts.



288 PAUL YU 30

Actually Grice's own explication of sentence meaning is in terms of speaker meaning and having a procedure in one's repertoire (rather than convention). The notion of one's

having a procedure in one's repertoire, however, is left quite unanalyzed, though Grice recognizes it to be problematic. See Grice, 'utterer's Meaning, Sentence-Meaning, and

Word-Meaning', p. 62. For some critical discussion of Grice's proposal and the principal basis of my refusal to consider it, see Chomsky, Reflections on Language, pp. 73-7. See note 10 above. 31 David Lewis, 'languages and Language', in K. Gunderson (ed.), Language, Mind and

Knowledge, pp. 5-6. 32 See example, T. Burge, 'On Knowledge and Convention' Philosophical Review, 84, 2

(April 1975) and R. Grandy's review of Lewis's book Convention, Journal of Philosophy, 74, 2 (Feb. 1977). 33 I am not suggesting that Griceans are somehow wedded to Lewis's analysis of con vention. I discuss the Gricean program in terms of Lewis's analysis for two reasons: (a) it is perhaps the best developed account of convention available, and (b) it is the analysis

which Griceans (Schiffer, Bennett, etc.) in fact rely on. It is my belief, though I shall not try to show this, that my critique below of the Gricean program will hold for any reasonable analysis of convention. 34 Niceties aside, these are the formulations, respectively, of Bennett and Schiffer. See

Bennett, Linguistic Behavior, p. 179, and Schiffer, Meaning, p. 156. For the sake of

simplicity I omit the (analogous) formulations for sentence meanings of imperative-type sentences. 35 See Chomsky, Reflections on Language, pp. 67-8. 36 See references in note 24. Also see G. Harman, 'Three Levels of Meaning', Journal of Philosophy 65 (1968) 66-75.



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On the Gricean Program about Meaning