In and Out of Grice: Second Round: "Dictiveness"

--- Sorry for academic boring header to this.

But if (WoW:363) Grice can distinguish between an INNER range of characteristics of 'formal signification' from an OUTER range, the same transpires when it comes to the 'second-best' candidate of 'dictiveness':

"If there is an inner range
of characteristics which belong to the
dictive content of a signifying
expression as forming part of what such
an expresion,"

to speak loosely,

"says",
it is foreseeable that there will be an
outer range of cases involviing
characteristic which, though NOT part
of what a signifying expression 'says', DO
form part of what such an expression conveys."

And conveys, so, Grice charmingly put it,

"in some gentler and less forthright manner ---
part, for example, of what it hints or suggests."

For surely when wife asks,

"How does this dress fit me?"

the answer is "WONDERFULLY." There is NO way, before the opera, that she wants a sincere answer.