H. P. Grice: What is explicitly conveyed, and what ain't!

THE IMPLICATUM

First things first.

Let's begin with the characterization of the notion of 'implicature'. 

IMPLICATURE 

Suppose that A and B are talking about a mutual friend, C, who is now working in a bank. 

A asks B how C is getting on in his job, and B replies, 

Oh quite well, I think; he likes his colleagues, and he hasn't been to prison yet. 

At this point, A might well inquire what B is implying, what he is suggesting, or even what he means by explicitly conveying that C had not yet been to prison. 

The answer might be any one of such things as 

that C is the sort of person likely to yield to the temptation provided by his occupation, 

that C's colleagues are really very unpleasant and treacherous people, and so on and so forth. 

It might, of course, be quite unnecessary for A to make such an inquiry of B, the answer to it being, in the context, clear in advance. 

It is clear that whatever B implies, suggests, indicates, hints, implicitly conveys, means in this example, is surely, by definition, distinct or different from what B explicitly conveys, which is, simply (shall we say?), or ONLY, that C has not been to prison yet. 

The use of 'not' may mislead:

Cf. 

Good you ask: he has been to prison twice already, where he now sits.

I wish to introduce, as terms of art, the verb implicate or 'imply' and the related nouns implicature (cf. implying) and implicatum (cf. what is implied). 

The point of this manoeuvre is to avoid having, on each occasion, to choose between this or that member of the family of verbs ("mean," "suggest," "imply," "hint," "indicate," implicitly convey," "communicate in not quite a straightforward fashion," and surely there are others! Linguistic botany here necessary!) for which "implicate" is to do general duty. 

I shall, for the time being at least, have to assume to a considerable extent an intuitive understanding of the meaning of "explicitly convey" in such contexts, and an ability to recognize this or that particular verb as a member of the family with which "implicate" is associated. 

Austin would have loved that!

I can, however, make one or two remarks that may help to clarify the more problematic of these assumptions, namely, that connected with the meaning of the philosophical piece of jargon, "explicitly convey."

In the fashion in which I am using the piece of philosophical jargon, "explicitly convey," I intend what an utterer has explicitly conveyed to be closely related to the conventional meaning of the words (the sentence) he has uttered. 

Suppose someone to have uttered the sentence 

The carpenter was painfully caught in the grip of a vyse. 

Given a knowledge of the vernacular, but no knowledge of the circumstances of the utterance, one would know something about what the utterer explicitly conveys, on the assumption that he is speaking the standard vernacular, and speaking literally. 

One would know that he has explicitly conveyed, about some particular male person or animal x, that at the time of the utterance (whatever that was), either (1) x was unable to rid himself of a certain kind of bad character trait (Middle English spelling of Latinate 'pecatum') or (2) some part of x's person (usually his arm, rather than leg) was caught in a certain kind of tool or instrument with which we standardly associate a carpenter (approximate account, of course). 

But for a FULL identification of what the utterer explicitly conveys, one would need to know (a) the identity of x (St. Joseph?) (b) the time of utterance, and (c) the meaning, on the particular occasion of utterance, of the phrase "to be caught in the grip of a vyse," a decision between Middle English 'peccatum' and the usual tool of a carpenter such as St. Joseph.

This brief indication of my use of the phrase "explicitly convey" leaves it open whether an utterer who explicitly conveys (today) 

St. Joseph is a great carpenter

and another utterer who says (also today) 

Mary's husband is a great carpenter.

would, if each knew that the two singular terms had the same reference, explicitly convey 'the same thing.'

But whatever decision is made about this question, the apparatus that I am about to provide will be capable of accounting for this or that implicatum that might depend on the presence of one rather than another of these singular terms in the sentence uttered. 

One would be apposite, the other won't.

Such an implicatum would merely be related to this or that conversational maxim governing discourse.

In this or that case the conventional meaning of the words used will determine what is implicated, besides helping to determine what the utterer  explicitly conveys

If Jill say (smugly, as Frege would not):

Jack is an Englishman; he is, therefore, brave.

Jill has certainly committed herself, by virtue of the meaning of her words, to its being the case that Jack's being brave is a consequence of (follows from) Jack's being an Englishman. 

But while Jill does explicitly convey that Jack is an Englishman, and she also explicitly conveys that Jack is brave, I do not want to say that Jill explicitly conveys (in the favored fashion) that it follows from his being an Englishman that he is brave, though Jill certainly indicates, and so implicates, that this is so. 

I do not want to say that Jill's utterance of this sentence would be, strictly speaking, false (or unsatisfactory) should the consequence in question fail to hold. 

So this or that implicaturm may well be 'conventional,' unlike the one with which we introduce this discussion of the implicatum ("He has been to prison twice already.")

So beware!