The Anti-Grice

by JLS
for the GC

THAT *MUST* BE Wayne Davis. How else would you explain that he managed to have Cambride University Press a rather short book entitled, "The failure of Grice". Imagine if the Bible Society were to allow something along THOSE lines about Christ!

--- Anyway, this is Schoolfield, as per his online thesis on this macabre charmer of a book:

www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/.../1/Grice%20paper%20Final%20Draft.doc

"Wayne Davis, in his book Implicature: Intention, Convention, and Principle in the Failure of Gricean Theory, presents the most pervasive argument against Gricean theory to date."

Don't leave for today what you can forget tomorrow?

"This work is critical of Grice’s theory as well as the theory of generalized conversational implicature... He begins by presenting Grice’s theory. One principle he adds, though he argues it is already presented in the theory, is what he calls “Grice’s Razor.” This principle is as follows: “Grice’s Razor: Other things being equal, it is preferable to postulate conversational implicatures rather than senses, conventional implicatures or semantic presuppositions because conversational implicatures can be derived from independently motivated psychosocial principles” (Davis 1998, 19)."

"This principle will be essential to most if not all of Davis’ claims, so he cites a massive number of sources to support it, which Grandy (1989, 516) supports in addition to this list."

"Davis’ first major argument against Grice is in the matter of quantity. He writes, “The existence of quantity implicatures is undeniable. What is false is the claim that quantity implicatures are derived from or explained by the Maxim of Quantity” (Davis 1998, 35). One of the main reasons for this maxim is for weaker statements to block stronger statements: “The idea is that if the speaker were in a position to make the stronger statement, he should have” (Davis 1998, 34). However, Davis produces a myriad of counterexamples to this. In presenting these counterexample Davis uses a different symbol from Levinson; thus, for the propositions Davis puts forward “=>” to be read as “implicates” and “≠>” as “does not implicate.”"

"Here Davis compares:
“Did anyone die?”
Some did => -(All died).
Yes ≠> -(All died). (Davis 1998, 35)
However, some of Davis’ numerous counterexamples of weaker statements not implying stronger statements are as follows:"

"Some died ≠> -(Only some [a few, a minority] died).
Some died ≠> -(Some were killed [murdered, assassinated, executed,…])
Some died ≠> -(35.72% died). (Davis 1998, 35-36)
These arguments, and arguments denying that implicature, as some have considered, can be “in force” in certain circumstance and not in others arbitrarily, affect Grice’s and Levinson’s theories (Davis 1998, 37)."

"Davis next attacks tautology implicatures. The common example for this type of implicature is “War is war,” and is associated with a violation of the Maxim of Quantity, as it provides no information. He begins by noting that neither Grice nor Levinson provide an account for how the Maxim of Quantity generates these implicatures (Davis 1998, 42). Then he presents some counterexamples of non-implicating tautologies to undermine the principle in general; for example, “If it rains then it will rain or snow… The red car is either red and fast or red but not fast,” etc. (Davis 1998, 45). Additionally, he points out that when one considers statements similar to tautologies, “War is an armed conflict between groups,” they will typically appear to him or her as a definition, rather than consider the speaker to be implicating something (Davis 1998, 46). He writes, “tautology implicatures are far and away the exception rather than the rule… The fact that most tautologies lack implicatures undermines the claim that observed tautology implicatures can be derived from general psychosocial principles” (Davis 1998, 45). Concluding with, “the moral is clear. Generalized tautology implicatures… are not explained by the Gricean maxims. Convention seems to be the only answer” (Davis 1998, 46). His attack of the Gricean account of these implicatures is quite substantial. He follows in the same manner with a criticism of conjunction implicatures."

"Davis continues in this fashion undermining much of the work Griceans have attempted to settle, including “indeterminate” implicatures, relevance implicatures, what he calls “close-but” implicatures, etc. (Davis 1998, 70-75). He attacks Levinson’s theory when he addresses quantity implicatures more in depth, stating that scalar implicatures “can easily be extended: ,” and that this extension undermines implicatures caused by the Maxim of Quantity (Davis 1998, 84). He then moves on to the Relevance Theory of Sperber and Wilson. He writes that beside its connection to the Maxim of Relation, the Principle of Relevance cannot follow Grice’s model in the following way."

"The Principle of Relevance does not imply any of Grice’s other principles… Cooperative Principle: nothing guarantees that the contribution with the greatest number of contextual implications per cost must be the contribution required by the accepted purpose of conversation. Maxim of Quality: nothing… requires that the conveyed proposition or any of its contextual implications be true or justified. Maxim of Quantity… more, or less, informative propositions might be proportionately less costly to process. Furthermore the Principle of Relevance fails to imply the Maxim of Manner to the extent that brevity involves sacrificing content and not just eliminating unnecessary verbiage. (Davis 1998, 100-101)."

"Thus, according to Davis, many of the typical implicatures Grice’s theory wants to present, simply cannot be shown via Relevance Theory. In Sperber and Wilson’s defense though, the premise of their paper is solely to explain relevance."

"Conversational implicature through a relevance principle is merely an added benefit. Still, if the theory is merely about processing cost, there are many types of implicature that are based on excessively verbose language."

"Finally, Davis presents his theory of implicature conventions. Primarily, he argues that conversational implicature, unlike Grice’s claims, is not necessarily non-conventional. He writes, “We will see that being conventional does not entail being part of the meaning of implicature-bearing sentences, and that the distinction Grice marked with the terms ‘conversational’ and ‘conventional’ is valid even though convention is involved in both” (Davis 1998, 133). His theory presents implicature as a taught practice that is perpetuated because it is useful and convenient for the practice to be perpetuated. The four reasons besides precedence for implicature to be perpetuated are that one can form a mental association with an idea, that they are habitual, that they are traditional, and that they are reinforced by social pressure (Davis 1998, 134-135). From these practices, implicatures arrive, often arbitrarily, and persist due to perpetuation. However, one thing that Davis does not directly address is a point that Sadock makes, “the principles that ORIGINALLY allowed these expressions to have metaphorical senses are still vital and therefore these conventionalized implicatures are also causes where the Cooperative Principle could be invoked, but where it should not be” (Sadock 1978, 287). If an implicature becomes prominent enough to become a convention, its origins must still be accounted for. Davis, not considering this fact, presents his theories for the conventional basis for quantity implicatures, tautology implicatures, disjunction implicatures, modal implicatures, relevance implicatures, “close-but” implicatures, manner implicatures, and “interrogative/imperative” implicatures."

"This theory is quite dramatic in the way it presents conversational implicature. There is much for Davis to explain regarding the pervasiveness of some of the common implicature. Indeed, simply because Davis can provide a genealogy for certain implicatures, does not mean there is evidence that implicatures did, in fact, arise via these methods; and, the real strength of his argument relies on what some call “Obviously… overly harsh,” counterexamples (Bultinck 2005, 29)."