A fashion statement

So now members of the Grice club can judge by theirselves [sic]:

Welby (a Gricean)...

or Langer -- an anti-Gricean.

This is Dale, "Theory of meaning", the footnote I was referring. His genial phrase is:

"Langer represents a clear case of a philosopher who identified something like a notion of speaker-meaning only to let it go. Welby did not do this."

And for only that reason, every respected Griceian should hang a portrait of la Lady in his library (or something).

Dale notes:

"It is perhaps important to note that
various philosophers"

of both genders, etc.

"who I have mentioned in this history have at least vaguely broached the subject of meaning in the sense in which a speaker is said to mean something by an utterance."

He continues:

"What is important here is that though such philosophers addressed this notion, it seems not at all to have occurred to them that perhaps a theory of meaning could be based on this notion as it did to Welby."

He then addresses this philosopher, then, as perhaps Welby was not. (She was, as I say, a lady).

"Langer is a good example of such a philosopher. She speaks of "the ambiguous verb 'to mean'" and says of it that "sometimes it is proper to say 'it means,' and sometimes 'I mean.'"

----

Versus Grice's 'prim and proper' Aunt Matilda who finds it improper to say,

"He is a runt" meaning undersized person (WoW:VI).

Note that Langer is clever enough NOT to say 'improper'.

Dale goes on:

"She continues, "[o]bviously, a word - say, 'London' - does not 'mean' a city in just the same sense that a person employing the word 'means' the place" (Langer (1942), p. 55)."

True.

It is genial of Grice to have focused on what Austin called a 'that'-clause (I owe this to R. Hall who checked with the OED and worked with it). I.e. for Grice it's a bit like the 'occasion-meaning' of H. Paul:

what U means by x.

And what U means is

"that"-p.

I.e. the specification is in oratio-obliqua.

It is improper to wonder what the U meay have meant by "London". To use Langer's example. Or not.

But she shouldn't have dismissed the complications like that.

Dale notes:

"But though Langer notes the notion of speaker meaning, it is only to put it aside: "In the further analyses that follow, 'meaning' will be taken in the objective sense, unless some other is specified; that is to say, I shall speak of terms (such as words) as 'meaning' something, not of people as 'meaning' this or that" (Langer (1942), pp. 57-58)."

The 'this and that' (irreverent) of La Langer should be taken with a pinch of salt. Of course that may apply to 'that'-clauses.

"By uttering 'London' U meant that he was going to London"

conversational context:

A: Where are you going?
B: London

----

This is NOT to rely on a "Fido"-Fido theory of meaning -- referred to by Schiffer, too, as I recall in papers and stuff.

Dale concludes his genial note with the phrase I found so good, 'to let go':

"The fact that Langer didn't
make use of a notion of speaker-meaning
doesn't makes her work any less interesting, by the way. But"

--- by the Griceian way.

"Langer represents a clear case of
a philosopher who identified something like
a notion of speaker-meaning only to let it go. Welby
did not do this."

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