Implicature: Intention, Convention, and Principle in the Failure of Gricean Theory (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy)

by Wayne A. Davis

H. P. Grice's theory of implicature provides the leading paradigm for research in pragmatics. Wayne Davis argues controversially that Gricean theory does not work. In developing his argument the author explains that the psycho-social principles actually define the social function of implicature conventions, which contribute to the satisfaction of those principles. By offering a searching and systematic critique of one of the established doctrines in the philosophy of language, this challenging book will be of particular importance to philosophers of language and linguists, especially those working in pragmatics and socio-linguistics.

216 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[Nat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Davis argues that the Gricean attempt to explain implicatures fails and offers the rough outlines of an alternative account.

The Gricean theory of implicature tries to explain how speakers can implicate one thing by saying another in terms of general, rational, conversational principles. For example, when someone says "I ate some of the cookies", she (usually) implicates that she didn't eat ALL of the cookies. Grice explains that kind of phenomenon in terms of what he calls the maxim of quantity, which holds that one should make one's contribution to a conversation as informative as one can (suitable for the purposes of the conversation). If someone says that she ate some of the cookies, and she is observing the maxim of quantity, then we can infer that she isn't in a position to say something more informative--namely, that she ate ALL of the cookies. So, in virtue of the presumption that she is obeying the maxim, and the fact that "I ate all of the cookies" entails "I ate some of the cookies", we can conclude that the speaker isn't in a position to say that she ate all of the cookies. Hence the implicature. This kind of explanation is widely accepted and deployed.

Davis thinks it's totally wrong. His alternative account emphasizes the idiosyncratic and unsystematic nature of many implicatures, and claims that implicatures are simply conventional uses of certain statements to convey other statements.