Interpersonal context: implicature
We observed at the start of the discussion of meaning and context in the previous chapter (3.1) that one of the crucial tasks of a semantic theory must be to characterize the scope of an expression’s meaning. Given that all utterances occur in some context, it is necessary to separate off those aspects of an utterance’s effect which may be due to its use in a particular context from those created by the meanings of its constituent elements. So far, we have distinguished two particular ways in which context may be manifested linguistically: reference, discussed in the previous chapter, and illocutionary force. Both, we have claimed, need to be distinguished from linguistic meaning (sense): neither the object to which an expression refers, nor the speech act of which it is a part, need necessarily to be considered to constitute part of that expression’s meaning (sense).
Within the intentional-inferential framework initiated by Grice, one of the principal ways of thinking of the interrelations between meaning and context has been in terms of the notion of conversational implicature. The theory of conversational implicature was developed by Grice in a famous series of lectures delivered in 1967, and has been extremely influential in subsequent philosophy, linguistics and cognitive science. Grice’s primary interest was in precisely the question of the scope of meaning: how can the boundary between what an expression means and the use it is given in a particular context be satisfactorily drawn (1989: 4)? How, in other words, does sentence meaning relate to utterance meaning (see 1.4.4)? In particular, his project was to develop a way of thinking about language which insulates our conception of an expression’s meaning from the purely accidental facts about the ways in which it happens to be used. Not all of the features of an utterance in a particular context, Grice claimed, are directly dependent on the meanings of its constituents. Meaning does not determine use directly, and the apparent features of the overall effect of an expression in a certain context may be due not to the expression’s meaning as such, but to the interrelation between that inherent meaning and the way in which the expression is being used in that context: in a different context, the same expression, with the same inherent meanings, could have quite different features.
