Abstract for Wharton's essay

"Focussing on the role of natural signs and natural behaviors in communication, this paper makes two main points. First, verbal communication often involves a mixture of natural and non-natural meaning and there is a continuum of cases between showing and non-natural meaning. This suggests that pragmatics is best seen as a theory of intentional verbal communication rather than a theory of non-natural meaning. Second, some natural behaviors have a signalling function: they are, in effect, 'natural codes'. Such behaviors do not fit easily into Grice's distinction between natural and non-natural meaning, which suggests it is not exhaustive."