The Conversation Game: Turing and Grice

Speranza

There is a line in the new film about Turing  ("The Imitation Game", based
on Hodges's book, as, I think, a previous film with  D. Jacobi in the main
role) that reminded me of H. Paul G., an Oxonian don. From  memory, or
rephrasing.

CHRISTOPHER: You'll like this book, Alan. It's all  about CODES.
ALAN: Secret codes?
CHRISTOPHER: No. Just codes.
ALAN:  But it's like TALKING, then, right?
CHRISTOPHER: What d'you mean?
ALAN: I  mean, when we hold conversations, we don't mean what we say, do
we. People  don't. People mean otherwise than they say. I never KNOW!

(The passage is  good enough to motivate me to look for the script! O. T.
O. H., the soundtrack  (I like one with vintage tunes) was not THAT swingy).

Oddly, part of H.  P. G.'s literature abounds on two keywords here: code
model of communication (as  H. P. G.'s is not) and inferential model of
communication.

But then  Turing was Cantab., not  Oxon.
A. O. Scott saw the anti-Griceian sentiment in Turing, too, it seems:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/28/movies/the-imitation-game-stars-benedict-c
umberbatch.html?_r=0
"[Cumberbatch's] Turing, whom the film seems to place somewhere on the 
autism spectrum, is as socially awkward as he is intellectually agile. He can 
perceive patterns invisible to others but also finds himself stranded in the
desert of the literal. Jokes fly over his head, sarcasm does not register,
and  when one of his colleagues says,


“We’re going to get some lunch,”

Turing hears a trivial statement of fact rather than a friendly invitation.
“The Imitation Game” derives some easy amusement from the friction
between this  “odd duck” and the prevailing culture of his native pond. The film’
s notion of  Britain — not inaccurate, but also not hugely insightful — is
as a land of  understatement, indirection and steadfast obedience to norms
of behavior that  seem, to a fiercely logical mind like Turing’s, arbitrary
and  incomprehensible."

Of course the indirection is the implicature (Scott had previously referred
to the 'implications' of the film* -- "a complex and fascinating story bristling with ideas and present-day implications" -- which surely are implicatures, rather?); but H. P. G. would often relish on
the fact  that his 'mentor', J. L. Austin, like himself, was 'such a
literalist!'

Cheers.

References:

H. P. G., W.o.W.  (Way of Words)
Turing, "Thinking"
Turing, "The Imitation Game"
Ryle,  "The concept of mind".