Who Needs Central Meaning?

Jones:

"Do we know whether Grice's conception of "formal semantics" is confined to truth conditions, whether he construed it as potentially encompassing the whole of "central meaning" or even as going beyond central meaning?"

Indeed!

I wonder!

I would like to reconsider Grice's stretch with 'central meaning'.

Of course, he is interested in 'central' as an ADVERB. In _German_, we CAN say, "Meinung" (Opinion, as it happens). But in Grice, I think it's "meinand", i.e. he is using the -ing form, but he is meaning the gerund.

He is talking of "mean" qua verb.

Not "meaning" qua noun.

So, we need a subject. The subject is the utterer.

The utterer means...

--- Grice notes that 'means' is SELDOM used in the present tense (unless you are a Valley Girl, and you are dropping, "I mean," "if you see what I mean" every other word). In general, it is more common to focus on

"what utterer may have MEANT"

--- e.g. Clinton, "I never had _sex_ with her", etc.

--- You have the utterance, and you are looking for an interpretation. Still, I will use 'mean' in the present tense.

"U means"

This is followed by a 'that'-clause. While a teacher can MEAN "Jimmy", it's best to reduce all talk of meaning to 'that'-clauses:

The teacher meant that Jimmy is hopeless (as a student).

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There are other adverbial modifications Grice is into:

He wants to say that this is 'meaning' BY UTTERING 'x'.

Not "IN" uttering. But "BY" uttering. This is per-locutionary.

So the definiendum becomes:

"By uttering x, U means that..."

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And, as if this were not complex enough, he wants to introduce ANOTHER adverbial:

'centrally meaning'.

When does Grice introduce all that?

I think it is in WoW (i.e. William James lectures) and for some reason he reviews the whole thing for that inspired "Retrospective Epilogue". I think he had in mind two epilogues: one retrospective and one prospective. Otherwise the idiom is slightly redundant.

---

On p. 87 he has the example:

"A man, in a car, by refraining from
turning on his lights, means that I should
go first, and he will wait for me."

THIS IS SOME CASE of 'central meaning' -- yet surely not 'dictive'. So one has to be careful.

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An 'implicature' of that above may be that "U has no hurry in getting home", or something.

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On the same page, he mentions another similar case:

"hand-signalling a left turn" (hand-signaling a left turn, in American spelling).

-----

Again, no dictive.

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On p. 88, now, he writes (after a brief discussion on 'but' which motivates the manoeuvre):


"I want here to introduce SOME SUCH

IDEA AS THAT OF "CENTRAL MEANING"". I want

to be able to explain or talk about

what (whtin what U meant) U

centrally meant, to give a sense to

"In meaning that p, U centrally meant

that q""

Quite a task!

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With 'but', U is contrasting ("She was poor but honest") but contrasting is not a case of central meaning.

Grice goes on:

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He then uses 'centrally meaning' to define 'dictiveness', as it were.

----

U put forward an utterance with dictum "p" "iff "U did something x ... by which U centrally meant that p").

---

He lists four questions to follow. The fourth being:

"How is "U centrally meanT that p" to be explicated?"

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It is THEN that it makes more sense to re-read the Retrospective Epilogue, and find if Grice broadened his motivations for introducing such a notion.

I think that with 20 years having passed, Grice was well aware of the influence of the idea of the 'implicatum' as it had been vacuumed by linguists. In some circles, he is even referred to as a 'linguist'. So, he possibly found it appropriate, back in 1987, for the Epilogue, to re-emphasise that while implicatures are nice, etc., it is central meaning that should be what should have some 'focal' importance. Or not!

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And so on...