Paul Grice facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Herbert Paul Grice
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| Born | 13 March 1913 Birmingham, England, UK
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| Died | 28 August 1988 (aged 75) Berkeley, California, U.S.
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| Alma mater | Corpus Christi College, Oxford |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Analytic philosophy |
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Main interests
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Notable ideas
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Implicature · speaker meaning · Gricean maxims · Grice's paradox · Causal theory of perception |
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Influences
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Influenced
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Herbert Paul Grice (born March 13, 1913 – died August 28, 1988) was a British philosopher. He often published his work using names like H. P. Grice or Paul Grice. He is famous for his ideas about how we use language, especially his theories of implicature and the cooperative principle. These ideas are very important in the study of pragmatics, which is about how people use language in real-life situations. His work also helped shape the study of semantics, which is about the meaning of words and sentences.
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Who Was H. P. Grice?
Herbert Paul Grice was born in Harborne, a town in the United Kingdom. He grew up there and later went to Clifton College and Corpus Christi College, Oxford for his education.
After a short time teaching at Rossall School, he returned to Oxford University. He studied at Merton College and then became a teacher and fellow at St John's College in 1938.
During World War II, Grice served in the Royal Navy. After the war, he went back to his teaching job at St John's, where he stayed until 1967. That year, he moved to the United States. He became a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and taught there until he passed away in 1988.
In 1979, he came back to the UK to give special lectures called the John Locke lectures. He collected many of his essays and papers into a book called Studies in the Way of Words, which was published in 1989. Grice married Kathleen Watson in 1942, and they had two children.
Grice's Ideas on Meaning
One of Grice's most important ideas is his theory about how we understand meaning in language. He started working on this idea in 1948, and it was published in an article called "Meaning" in 1957. He later talked more about it in his lectures at Harvard University in 1967.
Natural vs. Non-Natural Meaning
In his article "Meaning," Grice explained two types of meaning:
- Natural meaning: This is when something means something else naturally, like a sign. For example, "Those spots mean measles." The spots naturally show that someone has measles.
- Non-natural meaning: This is when someone intends for their words or actions to mean something. For example, "John means that he'll be late." Here, John is using words to communicate his intention. Another example is "'Schnee' means 'snow'." The word "Schnee" means "snow" because people have agreed it does.
Grice showed that we use the word "mean" in different ways, depending on whether the meaning is natural or intended.
Understanding Speaker's Intentions
Grice focused mostly on non-natural meaning. His approach is called "intention-based semantics." This means he tried to explain meaning based on what a speaker intends to communicate.
He looked at two kinds of non-natural meaning:
- Utterer's meaning (or speaker meaning): This is what a person means when they say something.
- Timeless meaning (or conventional meaning): This is the usual meaning of a word or sentence, like what you find in a dictionary.
Grice believed that we can understand all language meanings by first understanding what a speaker intends. He suggested that when someone says something, they intend to make the listener believe something, and they want the listener to understand this intention.
For example, if someone says, "I'm hungry," they intend for you to believe they are hungry, and they want you to recognize that they intend for you to believe it.
He also suggested that the usual meaning of a word comes from how people regularly use that word to mean something.
Grice's Theory of Implicature
- Further information: Cooperative principle and Implicature
Grice's most famous idea is his theory of implicature. This theory explains how we understand things that are not directly said but are hinted at or implied. He introduced this idea in his lectures in 1967.
What is Said vs. What is Implied
Grice said that when someone speaks, they do two things:
- They say something directly.
- They implicate something indirectly.
The idea of "saying" is what the words literally mean. But Grice noted that what we "say" can be a bit tricky to define exactly. He said that "saying" is a "central" way of communicating, like a direct message.
"Implicating" is when you suggest something without saying it directly. Grice created the word "implicature" to cover all the ways we imply, suggest, or hint at things. He called implicating a "non-central" or "indirect" way of communicating. This idea is also important in John Searle's theory of speech acts.
Conventional vs. Conversational Implicature
Grice also explained two types of implicature:
- Conventional implicature: This is when a word itself suggests something extra, beyond its main meaning. For example, the word "but" is like "and" in meaning, but it also suggests a contrast. If you say, "She was poor but she was honest," you are saying she was poor and honest. But you are also implying that being poor usually doesn't go with being honest. This extra meaning comes from the word "but" itself.
- Conversational implicature: This is when you understand something that isn't said directly, based on the situation and how people usually talk. This type of implicature is not tied to the specific words used, but to the context of the conversation.
The Cooperative Principle
To understand conversational implicatures, Grice introduced the cooperative principle. This is a basic rule that people follow when they talk to each other. It means that when we have a conversation, we expect everyone to be helpful and work together.
Cooperative Principle: "Make your contribution such as it is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged."
This means you should say what is needed for the conversation at that moment.
The Maxims of Conversation
Grice also came up with four "maxims" or rules that help us follow the cooperative principle:
- Maxim of Quantity (Information):
- Give enough information, but not too much.
- Don't say more than is needed.
- Maxim of Quality (Truth):
- Don't say things you know are false.
- Don't say things you don't have proof for.
- Maxim of Relation (Relevance):
- Stay on topic. Be relevant.
- Maxim of Manner (Clarity):
- Be clear and easy to understand.
- Avoid confusing words or sentences.
- Be brief.
- Be orderly.
Grice said there might be other maxims too, like "Be polite."
Conversational implicatures happen because we expect people to follow these maxims. If someone seems to break a maxim, we try to figure out why. We assume they are still trying to be cooperative. This helps us understand what they really mean, even if they don't say it directly.
For example, imagine a teacher writes a letter for a student applying for a philosophy job. The letter says: "Mr. X's command of English is excellent, and his attendance at tutorials has been regular."
The teacher seems to be breaking the Maxim of Quantity because they are not giving enough information about the student's philosophy skills. Since we assume the teacher is being cooperative, we infer that the teacher is hinting that the student is not good at philosophy, but doesn't want to say it directly. This is a conversational implicature.
Features of Conversational Implicatures
Grice identified some key features of conversational implicatures:
- Nondetachability: You can't usually change the words to say the same thing without also losing the implied meaning.
- Cancelability: You can take back or cancel an implicature. For example, you can say, "It's cold in here, but I don't mean you should close the window."
- Non-Conventionality: The implied meaning is not part of the word's usual meaning.
- Calculability: You can figure out the implied meaning by thinking about the maxims and the situation.
Generalized vs. Particularized Implicature
Grice also separated conversational implicatures into two types:
- Particularized conversational implicature: These happen in specific situations because of special things about the conversation. The example of the teacher's letter is a particularized implicature.
- Generalized conversational implicature: These usually happen when certain words or phrases are used, unless there's a special reason they don't. Grice didn't explain this type in great detail, but other philosophers have worked on it.
Grice's Paradox
In his book Studies in the Way of Words, Grice described something he called Grice's paradox. It shows how tricky it can be to understand statements that involve conditions and probabilities.
Imagine two chess players, Yog and Zog. They play 100 games.
- Yog plays as white 90 times out of 100.
- There are no draws (games always have a winner).
Here are the results:
- When Yog was white, he won 80 out of 90 games.
- When Yog was black, he won 0 out of 10 games.
From these results, we can say:
- (i) 8 out of 9 times, if Yog was white, he won.
- (ii) Half the time, if Yog lost, he was black.
- (iii) 9 out of 10 times, either Yog wasn't white, or he won.
It might seem like you could use logic to figure out other things, like:
- ([a] from [ii]) If Yog was white, then half the time he won.
- ([b] from [iii]) 9 out of 10 times, if Yog was white, then he won.
But both (a) and (b) are actually wrong! They don't match what we know from (i). This paradox shows that understanding statements with "if-then" and probabilities can be more complicated than it seems at first glance.
Criticisms and Other Theories
While Grice's ideas are very important, other philosophers have also built upon or challenged his theories. For example, Relevance theory, developed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson, uses some of Grice's ideas but also offers different ways to understand how we communicate and infer meaning.
Images for kids
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A photograph of Herbert Paul Grice.
See also
In Spanish: Paul Grice para niños
