Grice's Yawn

by JLS
for the GC

Suppose someone yawns in front of you. Suppose he is Grice. You may be able, on occasion, to draw the 'unwanted' implicature. If it is an implicature, it is of course 'wanted' (an implicature is not like a baby, which can be unwanted and yet a baby).

You may derive, "He is bored by what I say -- or something".

Yet, Grice was impressed by new developments in neurophysiology. So, what he 'meant', perhaps, was that
Grice's system was displaying part of a thermoregulatory response in order to cool the brain by shunting blood to Grice's facial muscles which thus acted as radiators offloading heat from the redirected blood.

One may wonder why he would like to 'mean' that.

M. Green wrote on "Grice's Frown", brilliantly. Now, THAT is a cryptic case by Grice. I was recently re-reading his "Meaning Revisited", and he has this example,

"By that gesture he meant that he was fed up".

So, Grice was still using 'mean' without scare quotes -- unlike Stevenson, who the early Grice worshipped.

This from today's New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/science/28qna.html

"As for why people yawn, “it is not entirely known,” Dr. Ebben said. “However, the most recent data suggests that it is part of a thermoregulatory response that helps cool the brain by shunting blood to facial muscles that act as radiators and offload heat from the redirected blood.”"

----

To reconsider, then, using Grice's neologism, almost, of 'mean':

"That yawn meant-nn that he was fed up"

---- "I mean 'that gesture' in the use apt for communication" -- or something, Grice has it.

----

"That yawn meant-nn that he was fed up."

Strictly, what that yawn 'meant' -- as Stevenson properly would have it in scare quotes -- is something else:

"That yawn 'meant' that the system is displaying a

part of a thermoregulatory response
to help cool the brain

--- and that response is effected

by

shunting blood to the facial muscles
which act as radiators and
thus offload heat from the redirected blood."

Or something.