Grice on 'meaning' versus 'signification'

-- by JLS
------ for the GC

Jones, "Strand 5", this blog -- commenting on Grice's verbalising ('the headline') the strand before he dissects it:

"My own natural reaction is to consider meaning to be at
stake only on the one side of this distinction, and so to
think that Grice's usage of the term here is broader than I
would enthusiastically endorse.
Possibly Grice also has such reservations, because as we
move from the headline to the details Grice drops "meaning"
and talks about "significance". That's good for me, I am
happy with allowing "significance" to be broader than
meaning."

Hear, hear.

Of course I cannot say. Imagine an Italian translating Grice. Everytime Grice uses 'meaning' the Italian can NOT use 'meaning' (Hey, he is supposed to be translating -- I suppose I agree when they say that Italian should be restricted just to opera).

So he'll use something like 'significare', 'significazione':

as per wiki:

http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significazione

"'significazione' è un concetto semiotico che indica la relazione tra un 'significante' ed un 'significato'". Nella significazione l'emittente non è presente. A compiere tutto il lavoro comunicativo è per l'appunto il destinatario, che decide di considerare un determinato elemento della realtà come messaggio, o più precisamente di un segno, rappresentazione della relazione fra un significante e un significato."

Enough to give Grice a headache.

Oddly Grice HATED the word 'sign', but Carnap apparently did not. The OED features (as discussed elsewhere by me, and commented on by S. Sharpless) a quote from Carnap, Introduction to Semantics, on 'sign', dwelling on the 'type'-token distinction. Carnap uses 'ambiguous' as it applies to the 'sign'.

"Significance" is yet a different animal.