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Conversational Implicature, Thought, and Communication

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Conversational Implicature, Thought, and Communication Conversational implicature, thought, and communication Jeff Speaks October 17, 2006 Abstract. Some linguistic phenomena can occur in uses of language in thought, whereas others only occur in uses of language in communication. I argue that this distinction can be used as a test for whether some phenomenon can be explained via Grice’s theory of conversational implicature (or any theory similarly based on principles governing conversation). I argue further, on the basis of this test, that conversational implicature cannot be used to explain quantifier domain restriction or apparent substitution failures involving coreferential names, but that it must be used to explain the the phenomenon of referential uses of definite descriptions. I conclude with a brief discussion of the relevance of this to the semantics/pragmatics distinction. It is now a commonplace that what a speaker means, asserts, or conveys by an utterance of a sentence can go beyond what the sentence means (semantically expresses) in the context of utterance. It is, however, controversial which cases fit this description. One such controversial case concerns quantifier domain restriction. Suppose, standing in my apartment after a party, I say to my wife dejectedly, ‘Every bottle is empty.’ What is uncontroversial is that what I convey by this utterance is not that every bottle in the universe is empty, but that every bottle in the apartment is empty. What is controversial is how this phenomenon should be explained. On one view, the semantic strategy, the sentence ‘Every bottle is empty’ is context- sensitive; it expresses a different proposition relative to different contexts of utterance. This might be because, for example, the logical form of the sentence contains a variable whose value is the domain of quantification, and the value of this variable varies with contexts of utterance (Stanley and Szab´o(2000)). According to an opposed pragmatic strategy, the sentence literally means (semantically expresses) the false proposition that every bottle in the universe is empty; there is some other non-semantic explanation of the fact that in this scenario I manage to convey the restricted proposition that every bottle in the apartment is empty. There is considerable intuitive support for the pragmatic strategy for handling these cases; it is true, after all, that my wife could have replied by saying ‘Well, every bottle isn’t empty; our guests only ∗Thanks for helpful discussion to Steven Davis, Brendan Gillon, Michael Nelson, Scott Soames, and two anonymous referees for Mind & Language. Address for correspondence: Jeff Speaks, Department of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame, 100 Malloy Hall, Notre Dame, IN 46556. Email: [email protected]. 1 drank all of the liquor in our apartment.’ There is certainly a sense in which this reply is, even if not helpful, on target; the pragmatic strategy has a nice explanation of this in terms of its claim that the original sentence is literally false. One who endorses the pragmatic strategy must say how a proposition p can be con- veyed by an utterance of a sentence which, in the context, means something other than p. According to a Gricean version of the pragmatic strategy, this explanation is given in terms of certain rules governing conversation. Grice’s idea was that in some utterances, one can convey a proposition by conversationally implicating it. One conversationally im- plicates a proposition p by an utterance when (roughly) the following three conditions are satisfied: (1) the speaker is presumed to be cooperative, in the sense that he is following the maxims of conversation; (2) the assumption that the speaker thinks p is required to bring his utterance into conformity with the conversational maxims; and (3) the speaker thinks that the audience is capable of seeing both that (2) is true, and that the speaker thinks that (2) is true (Grice, 1975, 30-1).1 In the present case, the utterance of a sentence which means that every bottle (in the universe) is empty is an utterance of a sentence which is obviously false, and so violates the Maxim of Quality. So, if we are to assume that the speaker is being cooperative, we must assume that the speaker was trying to get across some distinct, not obviously false proposition; it seems likely that this proposition should be related to the obviously false one which was literally expressed by the sentence; given the context, the obvious choice is the proposition that every bottle in the apartment is empty.2 1 Conversational implicature and uses of language in thought But there is a problem about applying the apparatus of conversational implicature in the case of quantifier domain restriction: the phenomena to be explained can be generated in cases of language use outside of conversations. The most important such cases concern uses of language in thought. Suppose that my wife went to bed before the end of the party, and that after the last guest leaves, I say dejectedly to myself, ‘Every bottle is empty.’ This case seems strikingly similar to the one described above, in which I use the same sentence in conversation. It would be just as natural to describe the case as one in which I said to myself that every bottle in the apartment was empty as it would be to give the corresponding description of my utterance of the same sentence, in conversation, to my wife. But despite this similarity, it does not seem open to the same explanation: sitting alone after the party I was not engaged in a conversation, and hence was not subject to the conversational maxims. And this seems to cast doubt on the original Gricean explanation of the utterance to my wife; to the extent that the phenomena seem the same, an explanation which rests on features specific to one is ad hoc. Could a proponent of the Gricean explanation reply that thought is a kind of conver- sation with oneself, and so is governed by the same maxims as multi-party conversations? Not very plausibly. The Gricean says that my use of ‘Every bottle is empty’ in conversa- 1In her excellent ‘Speaker Meaning, What Is Said, and What Is Implicated’, Jennifer Saul distinguishes this definition of conversational implicature — Grice’s own — from related notions with which it is often conflated, which she terms ‘utterer-implicature’ and ‘audience-implicature.’ The arguments which follow against certain uses of conversational implicature to explain linguistic phenomena apply equally well to these related notions. 2For similar explanations of implicatures by Grice, see his discussions of ‘X is a fine friend’ and ‘You are the cream in my coffee’ (Grice, 1975, 34). 2 tion with my wife conveyed the restricted proposition that every bottle in the apartment is empty in part because I thought that she was capable of seeing that the assumption that I believed this and wanted to get it across by my utterance was required to make my utterance conform with the norms governing conversation (clause 3 in the definition of conversational implicature). But we cannot give the same explanation of my use of ‘Every bottle is empty’ in thought. Even if we grant that I count as the audience of my own utterance here, we should ask: Is it really the case that I manage to use this sentence to say to myself that every bottle in the apartment is empty only because I think that I am capable of working out that the assumption that I believe this is needed to make my utterance to myself consistent with the norms of conversation and, further, think that I know that I am capable of working out that I think this? Even if I could have these strange beliefs on an occasion, it hardly seems that they are required for me to use ‘Every bottle is empty’ in thought to mean that every bottle in the apartment is empty.3 3So this argument is distinct from the familiar argument against Gricean analyses of speaker-meaning in terms of audience-directed intentions which is based on the possibility of meaning something by an utterance without having an audience. That argument relies on the controversial claim that one cannot regard oneself as an audience in cases of ‘speaking to oneself’; the above argument does not rely on this claim, but only on the claim that one can use sentences like ‘Every bottle is empty’ in thought without having the bizarre beliefs which an explanation of such uses in terms of conversational implicature would require. Thanks to an anonymous referee for pressing this point. It’s also important to note that nothing hangs on the view that the conversational implicatures are in this case generated by violations of the Maxim of Quality. As Kent Bach notes in ‘Quantification, Qualification, and Context’, we can generate cases of quantifier domain restriction with obviously true as well as obviously false sentences. In the present case, if I had uttered ‘Not every bottle is empty’, I would have succeeded in conveying the restricted proposition that not every bottle in the apartment is empty, despite the fact that the original sentence (according to the pragmatic strategy) expresses the true proposition that not every bottle in the universe is empty. For this reason it seems right that the most plausible version of the Gricean story about quantifier domain restriction takes my conveying the proposition that every bottle in the apartment is empty to be an instance of ‘conversational impliciture’ generated by the utterance’s ‘obvious lack of relevant specificity’ rather than a conversational implicature generated by its obvious falsity. But the argument against Gricean explanations above depends not on which maxim is violated (truth vs. specificity) but rather the very idea that the fact that the speaker means the relevant proposition p depends upon the speaker’s believing, of some maxim or other, that the audience believes that the speaker’s thinking p is required to bring the speaker into conformity with that maxim (whatever it is).
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