Mediaeval intentiones in the work of Grice

Dale, aptly, furthers a casual reference to one Campbell by Edmond Wright. Dale notes in a footnote to his online "Theory of meaning" that this is some old author called "Campbell".

And adds:


"Gardiner himself speaks of the "rhetorical intentions" of the speaker a number of times in his book. In a very early paper of his, "Some Thoughts on the Subject of Language", he says the following: "Besides the content of the statement, command, question, wish, negation, maxim, epigram, or curse that is expressed, there is always involved an unexpressed relation to a listener, which by a curious paradox, is in practice the decisive factor in determining what words are actually used and the order in which they are arranged"."

Dale adds:

"He then asks in a footnote, "May it not, then, be said that what is now most required for the progress of linguistic science is the study of comparative Rhetoric?" (Gardiner (1919), p. 6)."

And also:

"The connection between the tradition of rhetorical studies, which, of course, goes back to Aristotle and earlier, and the tradition that I see as flowing through Welby and Gardiner to Grice, unfortunately cannot be further examined here."

I first got or grew an interest here where that popular Griceian, Geoffrey Neil Leech, of Gloucester, started writing about "conversational rhetoric".

For a seminar on medieaval philosophy, I noted -- must have the essay somewhere -- that if you read, say, Aquinas's commentary on Aristotle's De Interpretatione -- I used the Patrologia Latina, as I recall -- there's loads about 'intentio' and 'intentiones'.

Much later, when re-reading Grice in a "Greek" (classical philosophical) key, I found how serious we have to take Grice's casual references to 'conversational implicature' and 'something of the nature of a figure of speech'.

'rhetorical figures' indeed divide:

'figures of speech' 'skhema lexeos'

and other.

Etc. I think I discussed that with Nerlich, elsewhere!