Grice -- and Griceian

Speranza

H. Paul Grice was once called "a hard nut to crack."

As shown by
current literature concerned, Grice's major contribution lies in his
'ordinary language' philosophizing.

Specifically, throughout his life,
Grice has given continuous thoughts to an
extensive anatomy of meaning, the conversationalist hypothesis,
rationality, creature construction, and absolute value.

There are, however, at least two points that need to be
taken into account when it comes to evaluating Grice's legacy, one, little emphasis is placed upon the ''rational
grounding of Grice's philosophical project''; two, as insightfully and
sharply pointed out that Grice's principal interest
is in the formulation of a theory of conversation is widely and
mistakenly assumed; in actual fact, several of Grice's themes remain
well untouched upon.

In other words, at present, what we know about
Grice is a mere iceberg of his broad and profound ideas.

Besides,
reading Grice, one might be reminded of a hard fact, namely, social
sciences for most of the time, study the ordinary and the obvious, and
it is these obvious and ordinary stuffsthat is really hard to tackle
simply because what appears ordinary and disordered turns out to be
extraordinary and systematic, for which Conversation Analysis
undoubtedly is a powerful example.