H. P. Grice, "The Griceian paradigm"

the entire idea that we should pay detailed attention to the way we talk seems to me to have a certain quality which is characteristic of a philosophical revolution (at least a minor one).”

“I was once dining with P. F. Strawson at Magdalen’s when one of the guests present, an Air Marshal, reveals himself as having, when he was a student, sat at the feet of Cook Wilson, whom he revered.”

“Strawson asked the Air Marshal what he regarded as specially significant about Cook Wilson as a philosopher.”

“After a good deal of fumbling, the Air Marshal answers that it was Cook Wilson's delivery of the message that ‘what we know we know.”

“This provokes in me, then, some genteel silent mirth.”

“But, a long time later, I realise that mirth, however genteel and silent, is quite inappropriate.”

“Indeed, Cook Wilson’s message was a platitude, but so are many of the best philosophical messages.”

“For they exhort us to take seriously something to which, previously, we have given at best ‘lip service,’ as it were.”

“J. L. Austin’s message was another platitude.”

“J. L. Austin’s message, in effect, says that, if in accordance with prevailing fashion one wants to say that all or some philosophical propositions are really about linguistic usage, one had better see to it that one has a proper knowledge of what linguistic usage is and of what lies behind it.”

“This sophisticated but remorseless literalism is typical of Austin.”

“When seeking a way of organizing a discussion group to entertain a visiting logician from The New World, Austin says, ‘They say that logic is a game. Well then, let’s play it as a game'; with the result that we spent a fascinating term, meeting each week to play that week’s improved version of a game called, by Austin, ‘Symbolo,’ a sequence (I suspect) of less thrilling ancestors of the game many years later profitably marketed under the name of ‘Wffn’Proof.’”

“Another appealing element is the fact that J. L. Austin had, and at times communicated, a prevalent vision of ‘ordinary language’ as a wonderfully intricate instrument.”

“By this I do not mean merely that Austin saw, or hoped one day to be able to see, our language conforming to a Leibnizian ideal of exhibiting an immense variety of linguistic phenomena which are capable of being elegantly and economically organized under a relatively small body of principles or rules.”

“Austin might have had such a picture of language, and may indeed have hoped that some extension or analogue of Chomsky's work on syntax, which he greatly admired, might fill in the detail for us, thus providing new access to the Austinian science of grammar, which seemed to reside in an intellectual Holy of Holies, to be approached only after an intensive discipline of preliminary linguistic studies.”

“What I am imputing to Austin is a belief in our everyday language as an instrument, as manifesting the further Leibnizian feature of purpose; a belief in it as something whose intricacies and distinctions are not idle, but rather marvellously and subtly fitted to serve the multiplicity of our needs and desires in communication.”

“It is not surprising, therefore, that the Play Group discussions not infrequently involved enquiries into the [utterer’s?] ‘purpose’ or [utterer’s?] ‘point’ of some feature of ordinary discourse.”

“When put to work, this conception of ‘ordinary’ language seems to offer a fresh and manageable approach to a philosophical idea or a philosophical problem, the appeal of which approach, in my eyes at least, is in no way diminished by the discernible affinity between the approach on the one hand and, on the other, the professions and practice of Aristotle in relation to ‘ta legomena,’ “what is said.”

“When properly regulated and directed, ‘linguistic botanising’ seems, to me, to provide a valuable initiation to the philosophical treatment of a concept, particularly if what is under examination (and it is arguable that this should always be the case) is a family of different but related concepts.”

“Indeed, I will go further, and proclaim it as my belief that linguistic botanising is indispensable, at a certain stage, in a philosophical enquiry, and that it is lamentable that this lesson has been forgotten, or has never been learned.”