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Not his!
The one in his example from his 1948 talk -- adapted,
"Those spots didn't mean
anything to me, at first; however,
to the doctor, they meant that
he (Timmy, not the doctor) had
the measles"
It seems that only a very ignorant mother would say such. And one is amused that Grice felt so safe as to "things people say". As J. M. Geary remarked to me elsewhere (and I echo Tim W's points in his comments to his "Meaning", THIS BLOG) and of course due to all my philosophical excavations by wonderful L. J. Kramer, we
wonder:
Those spots didn't mean anything.
Geary wants to say:
Those spots mean spots.
-- Surely the woman couldn't have missed _that_ 'implicature'. In Tim W's rephrase (in his "Pragmatics and nonverbal communication") etc.
dark clouds mean rain
'pluie' means rain.
'pluie' means 'rain'.
---
But 'those spots mean 'spots'' sounds, for some reason, and not (just) a Gricean one, odd!
--- Etc.
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A few things to consider.
ReplyDeleteTrue to Grice, his utterance makes much more sense: it reads -- and it´s available online:
"Those spots didn´t mean anything to me, but to the doctor they meant measles".
I.e. without the rather clumsy (but to my mind essential) "that"-clause (that he had measles).
Since Karen was born in 1944 I can figure
Dear Kath,
Karen had the measles today. Poor
thing. At first, the spots didn´t
mean anything to me. Of course, when
the doctor came, he said that she
has the measles. Not to worry. Everything
is under control now.
x x x
your beloved hubby.
--- I.e. to an ignorant _father_ -- I´m not saying Grice was one -- spots many mean ANYTHING, i.e. who knows. Mothers usually do know.
Note that
Comment 2. We do use "mean" for BAD things. Dark clouds mean rain, etc.
Grice´s example in WoW:5
To a squash invitation¨:
Are you coming to play squash?
B displays bandaged leg.
Grice comments: "Surely what he meant is that he cannot play squash, or that he refuses the invite; but NOT that he has a bandaged leg."
Of course he is trying to counterrefute Hart on "carefully": "He drove the car carefully all the way back to his house."
So,
"those spots mean measles" makes sense, because measles is bad.
"those spots didn´t mean anything SERIOUS to me" (but to the doctor they meant measles, which, though not really serious, is not unserious either).
Etc. All this confuses what is otherwise a delightful good point by Grice, which becomes a delightfully Gricy one now.
Etc.