Linguist Misunderstands Grice

I don't know _which_ but some have!

I have read a lot of linguists discussing Grice. Some are fun. Some are not. Some complain that Grice is never clear,

"The basis for 'avoid unnecessary prolixity',
is not clear, whether it's given as
an empirical finding or a rationalalist
postulate coming from Grice's rationalist
head only"

-- or words to that effect.

I.e. linguists -- of the generative-semantic school, which are the only ones to be taken seriously when discussing Grice -- have their ways of arguing. They are _good_ ways of arguing.

(I have argued with linguists, but I usually get disappointed that they don't seem to realise the berths, as Grice would say, of the depths of the topics we are considering. Usually, for a linguist, any sentence is as good as any other. Whereas for a philosopher, it's usually some crucial crux that is crucifying him!).

On the other hand, philosophers who argue against Grice take different routes.

Consider L. J. Cohen. He took some awkward ones:

"In London, Cockneys use double negation. Surely
this refutes Grice on the identity of " - " and
"not". Not!

But then he gets more seriously. In general, philosophers who have argued against Grice are not interested into empirical issues, but methodological or theoretical decisions -- should we abide by Modified Occam's razor, or not? Etc.

Etc.