H. P. Grice

H. P. Grice, like many of the others, never abandoned a modest commitment to ordinary language.

Austin, Grice recounts, communicated a vision of ordinary language as a purposive instrument

"whose intricacies and distinctions are not idle, but rather marvellously and subtly fitted to serve the multiplicity of our needs and desires in communication."

"When put to work, this conception of ordinary language seemed to offer fresh and manageable approaches to philosophical ideas and problems."

"When properly regulated and directed, ‘linguistic botanising’ seems to me to provide a valuable initiation to the philosophical treatment of a concept, particularly if what is under examination (and it is arguable that this should always be the case) is a family of different but related concepts."

"Indeed, I will go further, and proclaim it as my belief that linguistic botanising is indispensable, at a certain stage, in a philosophical enquiry, and that it is lamentable that this lesson has been forgotten, or has never been learned."