-- by J. L. Speranza
--- for the Grice Club.
JONES, "Strand 5", this blog:
"[My distinctions] suggest that "central
significance" should be associated exclusively with what is
in the proposition asserted rather than in its context and
manner of assertion. This arises from our having coupled
the terminology with that which defines the boundary between
semantics and pragmatics."
Well, the idea that 'meaning' deals with semantics, and vice versa and that Bar-Hillel (unlike Grice) needed a dustbin is a 'received' one.
At this point I want to rehash TWO reductions:
1. FIRST GRICEAN reduction. What in "Meaning Revisited" he calls, grandly, the MAJOR problem (I used this in my "I haven't been mugged" paper, as published). This is the reduction of
the semantic ---> the psychological.
Grice wants to say that '.... means ...' is JUST '... desires ...'. This goes well with our ways of thought ("He didn't mean it" -- He never willed it).
2. SECOND Gricean reduction. (Against semantics as a discipline).
'expression meaning' ---> 'utterer's meaning'
This Grice calls, bless him, 'the minor problem' (in loc.cit., "Meaning Revisited").
He wants to say that philosophers (and more so, linguists, etc.) are overobsessed (Laurence Jonathan Cohen an example) with the 'semantic hypothesis'. Words have senses, etc.
For Grice, the meaning of a word REDUCES to what "people (vague)" mean by it (WoW:"Meaning").
---
Since, as per (i) the semantic reduces to the psychological, and as per (ii) expression meaning (what things OTHER than the utterer himself -- I'm using 'he' generally, to apply to bitches too -- a dog can mean, either female or female -- similarly I will use 'pussy' to apply to a MALE cat, too) reduces to utterer's meaning.
This leaves us only with the 'psychological'.
And to go into details as to 'border wars' here -- "this belongs to semantics" "because it is the meaning of the expression", "what the expression, in some favoured way of 'say'" "may be said to 'say'" etc. -- is, to coin a phrase, 'Griceian'.
Actually Kennedy coined "Griceian". I HAD seen it before, as used by Dennett, but I had forgotten all about it.
Then Kennedy, THIS BLOG, said, "Griceian" and I realised. Kennedy, like Grice, and indeed like Jones, were all born in the Heart of England (central meaning), so they know. Griceian is the right adjective here.
It's a questio subtilissima, allmost.
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I think we have quite a substantial divergence of usage between Grice and I on the word "semantics", as a result of which neither of Grice's reductions works in my world.
ReplyDeleteFirst off, there is nothing psychological about semantics in my use of the term, which is closer to Carnap's usage than Grice's and closer to its use in Mathematical Logic and Computer Science.
The connection between "semantics" and "meaning" is not so solid for me as it appears to be for Grice.
Semantics is a technical device which is useful in understanding certain kinds of language, particularly descriptive or propositional language. The kind of language which has truth conditions, maybe other kinds too, but not all language.
On the second reduction, this is worth discussion for conversational languages (languages in which people have conversations?) but seems irrelevant to formal languages, which we hope are less sensitive to context and certainly not sensitive to "speaker" or even "asserter" (since rarely spoken).
I'm afraid that this ("speakers meaning") is something which I am tempted to assign to pragmatics rather than semantics, but I am a pluralist like Carnap, so if you want to define or model(analyse) a language in terms of speaker's meaning then go right ahead and we will see how successful you are.
RBJ
First an etymological point, worth considering (people get bored at me at etymological remarks but can't help it).
ReplyDelete"semeion" was Greek for 'sign', almost. Or rather, there was this verb, "... semei ..." which meant "... means ...".
This root, 'sem-' gives both:
i. sem-eiosis, as used by Peirce and Carnap to mean the whole trichotomy.
ii. sem-antics, as used by Peirce and Carnap and Grice (Part II of WoW he entitled, provocatively, "Semantics and Metaphysics")
While we ARE writing in English (sort of, in my case), '... means ...' remains a rather untechnical term to me, and would go for the Greek root anyday (semantics, semiotics, anyone?)
Since 'pragmatics' has to do rather with 'pragma', Greek for 'action', that may be some argument by Grice NOT to blatantly embrace a 'pragmatic approach'. I KNOW because when I defended my PhD, the very use of the term 'pragmatic' got you into BIG troubles (One of my jury members, Alberto Moretti, was into "formal semantics", and could care less even about "formal pragmatics" -- even though he managed to phootocopy my copy of Gazdar's book with Academic Press, "Formal pragmatics" -- because those types first REJECT and then understand. You gotta love them. I got an A+ in my dissertation, so what would I worry for?).
I'll re-read your comment and post something extra, I hope. Or not.
I may provide comments to this in different blog posts, briefly, I hope... But I cannot help thinking of Anita Avramides.
ReplyDelete