What is Said

8/10/2019 What is Said

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What is said

Patrick Hawley*

Department of Linguistics and Philosophy, MIT, 77 Massachusetts Ave.,

Cambridge, MA 02139, USA

Received 20 November 2000; received in revised form 14 February 2002

Abstract

A misunderstanding of Grices distinction between saying and implicating leads at least one

theorist to misconstrue the pragmatics/semantics distinction. I clarify the Gricean picture,

hoping to shed light on debates about the relationship between pragmatics and semantics.

This paper begins with a presentation of Grices theoretical distinction between saying and

implicating, emphasizing its grounding in the intuitive distinction between conveying something

literally and directly, and merely suggesting or hinting it. I point out that someperhaps most

followers of Grice believe that, in some way, what is implicated depends on what is said. F.

Re canati (Re canati, Francois, 1993. Direct Reference: From Language to Thought. Black-

well, Oxford, UK.) is one example. The thought seems to be that the hearer in a conversation

needs to use what is said in a calculation to determine what is implicated. After speculating

that Griceans who accept the dependency claim are unduly focused on literal uses of lan-

guage, I argue that the dependency claim is mistaken. Rejecting dependency undermines

Re canatis argument for a particular way of separating semantics from pragmatics. I conclude

by exploring how what is said and what is implicated may be construed without dependency.

# 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Conversational implicature; Grice; Recanati; Semantics/pragmatics distinction; Semantic

underdetermination; Availability principle

1.

Suppose that I am sitting in a room with a friend. The sun is setting, and the room

is growing darker. I want my friend to turn on the light. I could just say so directly.

Friend, I might say, I want you to turn on the light. Or I could be more indir-

ect, relying on hints or suggestions. I may say My, its getting dark in here, or

exclaim I cant see you anymore! Are you still there?

Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 969991

www.elsevier.com/locate/pragma

0378-2166/02/$ - see front matter # 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

P I I : S 0 3 7 8 - 2 1 6 6 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 4 3 - 7

* Corresponding author.

E-mail address: [email protected] (P. Hawley).


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This differencethe difference between conveying something literally and directly,

and merely suggesting, hinting or implying itis clear and intuitive. And the differ-

ence is not simply a difference between rudeness and politeness. When I say some-

thing literally and directly, what I mean seems closely tied to the meanings of thewords I use and how they are put together. When I say something literally and

directly, someone who understands my words, understands me. But when I am

hinting or suggesting, my words alone wont tell you what I mean. If I say to my

friend My, its getting dark in here, my words have nothing to do with electric

light switches or my wants. My friend could understand my words and not realize

that I want him to turn on the light. My friend could understand my words but fail

to understand me.

Paul Grice developed an influential account of this intuitive difference. (Grice,

1989a) According to Grice, there is a distinction between saying and implicating.

When a speaker makes an utterance, what is said is what is directly or literally con-

veyed, and what is implicated is what is suggested, hinted or implied. Recall Grices

oft-repeated example of a philosophy professor writing a job recommendation letter

on behalf of one of his students. The professor writes The candidate is prompt and

has excellent penmanship, and nothing more. The professor does not mention the

candidates philosophical abilities. Clearly, the professor is trying to convey some-

thing other than he literally said, namely that the candidate is bad at philosophy.

The professor saidthat the candidate is prompt and has excellent penmanship, and

implicated that the candidate is bad at philosophy. In the previous example, saying

that its dark in the room implicates that I want my friend to turn on the light.Although Grice does not draw the distinction with precision, its intuitive appeal is

evident.

To make the distinction a little clearer, we should consider what Grice means by

the words saying and implicating. Grice uses the word implicate as a term of art,

standing in for words like hint or suggest or imply. The things I implicate are

called implicatures. Saying (in Grices sense) is supposed to be used in much the

same way as it ordinarily is. After all, the distinction is drawn intuitively; if we

intuitively think that the professor says that the candidate is bad at philosophy, then

what is saidis that the candidate is bad at philosophy. What is said is also supposed

to be closely related to the conventional meaning of the words. . .

uttered. (Grice,1989c: 25) As I mentioned earlier, when someone says something literally and

directly, what they mean seems closely tied to the words they use and how they are

put together. Note, however, that saying, like implicating, is a technical term for

Grice. Grice admits that saying in his favored sense is in some degree artifi-

cial, slightly differing from ordinary uses of the word say. (Grice, 1989f: 118) The

differences are for greater theoretical utility. (Grice, 1989f: 121) Although Grices

say is used, generally, as we intuitively think it ought to be used, Grice apparently

permits that in judging what is said, we may sometimes set aside intuitions about

what someone says in favor of what would be theoretically useful.

Beyond the intuitive appeal, Grice makes the distinction between what is said andwhat is implicated compelling by sketching an account of one kind of implicature

conversational implicature. Conversational implicatures are present, according to

970 P. Hawley / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 969991


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Grice, because hearers presume that speakers are rational and cooperative. In order

to maintain this presumption, hearers may draw conclusions about what a speaker is

implicating. As Grice puts it: what is [conversationally] implicated is what is

required that one assume a speaker to think in order to preserve the assumption thathe is observing the Cooperative Principle (and perhaps some conversational maxims

as well). (Grice, 1989e: 86) The Cooperative Principle is to make your conversa-

tional contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the

accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.

(Grice, 1989c: 26) Grice suggests a list of maxims that are supposed to constrain

conversation in accord with the Cooperative Principle.1

For example, in the recommendation letter case, the professor would not be a

cooperative conversational participant unless he were trying to convey something

about the candidates philosophical abilities. Since he does not mention them, then,

assuming that he is trying to be cooperative, he must be suggesting something. The

letters recipient, recognizing this, supposes that the professor is hinting that the

candidate is bad at philosophy.

One goal of this paper is to clarify the relationship between saying and implicating.

What is implicated apparently depends on what is said in the following way: what is

implicated is calculated by the hearer from what is said along with other features of

the context of utterance; as Grice puts it, what is implicated is built on what is

said. (Grice, 1989b: 49) This apparent dependence is, I will argue, only apparent.

Grice adds a further condition on conversational implicature. The speaker must

believe that (potential) hearers are in a position to recognize the implicature:the presence of a conversational implicature must be capable of being worked out;

for even if it can in fact be intuitively grasped, unless the intuition is replaceable by

an argument, the implicature (if present at all) will not count as a conversational

implicature; it will be a conventional implicature. (Grice, 1989c: 31)

In other words, the speaker must believe that there is a rational path available to a

hearer to recognize the presence of a conversational implicature. Presumably, Grice

adds this condition because he thinks that conversations proceed rationally (because

he thinks that communication is a form of rational behavior).

The Gricean picture suggests a tidy division of labor. Semantics accounts for whatis said; general pragmatic principles account for conversational implicatures.

Separating semantics (a specific theory, tied to features of a particular language)

1 InLogic and Conversation, Grice defines conversational implicature thus: A man who, by (in, when)

saying (or making as if to say) that p has implicated that q, may be said to have conversationally impli-

cated that q, provided that (1) he is presumed to be observing the conversational maxims, or at least the

Cooperative Principle; (2) the supposition that he is aware that, or thinks that, q is required in order to

make his saying or making as if to sayp (or doing so inthoseterms) consistent with this presumption; and

(3) the speaker thinks (and would expect the hearer to think that the speaker thinks) that it is within the

competence of the hearer to work out, or grasp intuitively, that the supposition mentioned in (2) is

required. (Grice, 1989c: 3031). Note that in the Gricean framework, implicatures may either be conventional

or nonconventional. Conversational implicatures are a species of nonconventional implicature. In this

paper, I will not discuss so-called conventional implicatures. I only discuss conversational implicatures.

P. Hawley / Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 969991 971


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from pragmatics (a language independent general theory) has the appeal of making

the entire theoretical project seem more tractable. We have the appealing prospect of

a clean and simple semantics distinct from a general pragmatics.

Note that apart from capturing the intuitive distinction between conveying some-thing directly and suggesting or hinting it, and apart from giving us an appealing,

simple separation between semantics and pragmatics, the Gricean story is compel-

ling for another reason. The saying/implicating distinction may encapsulate the

tempting idea that there is something special and important about direct and literal

uses of language.

I will call this point of view the priority of the literal. This is not a specific thesis;

rather, it is a vague, general point of view.2 The believer in the priority of the literal

thinks that the literal meaning of words plays an essential role in making it possible

for someone to mean something by an utterance. The Gricean sympathetic to the

priority of the literal holds that the literal meaning of words plays an essential role

both in making saying possible and in making implicating possible. The Gricean

may (rather naturally) adopt the priority of the literal by holding that (1) the literal

meaning of words plays an essential role in making saying possible, and (2) saying

makes implicating possible. So, a Gricean sympathetic to the priority of the literal

may make a claim about the relationship between implicating and saying, namely

that, in some way, implicating depends on saying.

The priority of the literal is tempting for the Gricean because it meshes with two

observations. First, to understand what someone is saying, you start, it seems, by

understanding what their words literally mean. Second, to understand what some-one is hinting or suggesting, it seems that you need to first understand what they are

literally and directly saying; understanding what is implicated seems to require

understanding what is said.

The claim of dependency of implicating on saying may be worked out in more

than one way. For example, the Gricean might suppose that:

(A)understanding the explicature of an utterance is necessary for understanding the

conversational implicatures of that utterance.

(Explicature is a technical term that nicely parallels implicature. I use it in thefollowing way: the explicature of an utterance is what is said by the person in mak-

ing that utterance. Note that others (like Carston (1988) and Sperber and Wilson,

(1995)) use this term differently.) Claim (A) gives priority to what is said in terms of

understanding: the hearer must understand the direct and literal content of an

utterance before they can understand other things conveyed by an utterance. One

can imagine many other ways a Gricean could claim dependency between implicat-

ing and saying.

2 In the Retrospective Epilogue to Studies in the Way of Words, Grice suggests such a point of view

when he wonders whether there is any kind, type, mode, or region of signification which has special

claims to centrality, and so might offer itself as a core around which more peripheral cases of signification

might cluster, perhaps in a dependent posture. (Grice, 1989d: 359).



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I am now in a position to be more specific about what I am trying to accomplish.

My general goal is to articulate and defend a view which rejects the priority of the

literal, while preserving a useful distinction between pragmatics and semantics. I will

not complete this task here. The more restricted goal of this paper is to show thatthe Gricean may accept:

(1) There is a useful and intuitive distinction between what is said and what is

implicated.

but reject:

(2) What is implicated depends on what is said.

Since the Gricean already accepts (1), to justify this view, it will suffice to justify

rejecting (2) and show that rejecting (2) is compatible with accepting (1). In this

paper, I will argue for the rejection of (2) by trying to show that obvious ways of

spelling out a proposed dependency will not work. Claim (A), for example, will not

work. Then, to show that rejecting (2) is compatible with accepting (1), I will sketch

a picture that rejects a dependency of what is implicated on what is said while

maintaining a distinction between them. Finally, I will discuss how the results of this

paper relate to debates about the semantics/pragmatics interface.

The views I am arguing against are not made of straw. Many Griceans indeed

hold that, in some way, what is implicated depends on what is said. In fact, saysStephen Levinson, the Received View of Griceans is that what is saidis the input to

the pragmatic reasoning responsible for output ofimplicatures: what is implicated is

calculated on the basis of what is said (together with aspects ofhow it was said, in

the case of Manner implicatures). (Levinson, 2000: 171)

Francois Re canati, for example, is a theorist who thinks that what is implicated

depends on what is said.3 In his book Direct Reference, Recanati (1993) maintains

something like claim (A), and uses this claim in an argument for a principle to dis-

tinguish what is said from what is implicated. If I am successful, I will have shown

that Re canati is mistaken in holding the (A)-ish claim, and I will have shown that we

should not accept the argument based on that claim.

3 Here are other examples: . . .conversational implicatures are only indirectly associated with the lin-

guistic content of utterances. They are derived from the content of the sentences used . . . (Sadock, 1991:

366) [conversational] implicatures are not semantic inferences, but rather inferences based on both the

content of what has been said and some specific assumptions about the cooperative nature of ordinary

verbal interaction. (Levinson, 1983: 104) A conversational implicature. . . is an inference that derives

from what has been said in context taken together with some general background maxims of con-

versation. . . (Levinson, 1995: 92) Communication can be achieved by two different means: by encoding

or decoding messages or by providing evidence for intended inference about the communicators infor-

mative intention. Verbal communication, we argue, exploits both types of process. The linguistic meaning

of an utterance, recovered by specialized decoding processes, serves as the input to unspecialized central

inferential processes by which the speakers intentions are recognized. (Sperber and Wilson, 1987: 786).

One author tries to be more careful: An implicatum is completely separate from what is said and is

inferred from it (more precisely, from the saying of it). (Bach, 1994: 140).



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This result bears on the distinction between pragmatics and semantics, since

Re canati uses his principle to argue for a controversial way of separating pragmatics

from semantics. He defends the thesis of semantic underdetermination, the claim

that pragmatic effects play a central role in determining what is said. This is strongerthan the claim, obvious to many, that what is said is not determined by semantic

properties alone (given a context). For many agree that word disambiguation, and

the fixing of the references of terms, are to be described by general, language inde-

pendent principles. However, Re canati and others (Carston, 1988) argue that,

beyond disambiguation and reference fixing, the correct distinction between saying

and implicating forces us to conclude that pragmatic effects play a key, important

role in determining what is said. The possibility of semantic underdetermination

may be worrisome. If what is said is determined in large measure by the same

pragmatic means as what is implicated, then the distinction between semantics and

pragmatics is far more hazy than it initially appeared. Indeed, we may well wonder

whether the distinction between semantics and pragmatics collapses. However, if we

do not accept Re canatis criterion distinguishing what is said from what is impli-

cated, then we should not accept his argument for the thesis of semantic under-

determination.

If Re canatis argument fails, that does not, of course, show that other arguments

in favor of the thesis of semantic underdetermination fail; thus my conclusion may

seem rather limited. However, my claim about the relation between what is impli-

cated and what is said has broader interest. We can see this by considering Levin-

sons recent discussion of the semantics/pragmatics interface. (Levinson, 2000:Chapter 3) Levinson describes the Gricean Received View as follows. According to

the Received View, semantics is prior to pragmatics: the output of semantic pro-

cesses serves as input to pragmatic processes. (For example, conversational impli-

catures are calculated from what is said.) However, holders of the Received View

also acknowledge that the output of pragmatic processes can serve as input to

semantic processes. (For example, disambiguation, reference fixing and indexical

resolution can sometimes occur by pragmatic processes.) Levinson calls this Grices

circle. This is indeed a circle, he argues; post-semantic pragmatic processes and pre-

semantic pragmatic processes are sometimes the same kind of process. For example,

he argues, reference can be determined by the same kind of process that determinesconversational implicature. Levinson takes Grices circle as a paradoxical chicken-

and-egg problem which brings out questions about the pragmatics/semantics

interface. (Levinson, 2000: 172) The upshot of Levinsons discussion is that because

of Grices circle (along with other reasons) we should reject the Received View.

Levinson concludes that semantics is not prior to pragmatics; semantic and prag-

matic processes are distinct but interwoven.

I would quarrel with Levinsons formulation of the problem. The problem of

semantic underdetermination is, in my opinion, not best seen as a puzzling circle,

but as a worry that a clear theoretical distinction between semantics and pragmatics

is blurred or even threatened. Still, accepting Levinsons framework for a moment,we can see that the claim I am makingthat what is implicated is not dependent on

what is saidpoints to one way out of Grices circle. Pragmatic processes need



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not be seen as dependent on semantic processes which are in turn dependent on

pragmatic processes and so on. Instead, there is a way out of the circle: pragmatic

processes may function without semantic input. Thus, I, like Levinson, reject the

Received View that semantics is prior to pragmatics. Our reasons, however, differsubstantially. I hope at some future time to more fully confront Levinsons rich and

complicated discussion, but perhaps these brief remarks are enough to make clear

that my conclusion here is not limited to Re canatis argument for semantic under-

determination. It bears more generally on discussions about the relation between

semantics and pragmatics.

I will now try to clarify the relationship between implicating and saying. I claim

that what is implicated is independent of what is said; so it is a mistake to think that

what is implicated depends on what is said. My claim is not that in no case does

what is implicated depend on what is said. For I think that it is obviously true that

in some cases what is implicated depends on what is said. Rather, my claim is that in

some cases what is conversationally implicated does not depend on what is said. To

justify this claim, that in some cases what is conversationally implicated does not

depend on what is said, I will need first to be more explicit about what sort of

dependency I am denying, and then to produce some cases in which the distinction

between what is said and what is implicated is clear, and in which what is con-

versationally implicated does not depend on what is said.

Note that to assert that what is implicated is independent of what is said is not to

assert that implicating is independent of saying. Certainly, a person may implicate

something by saying something. When present, an implicature is determined by anact of utterance.4 Additionally, and independently, an act of utterance determines

what, if anything, is said. Grice, rather obscurely, appears to make this very point:

the implicature is not carried by what is said but only by the saying of what is

said, or by putting it that way. (Grice, 1989: 39)

While Grice is not clear what it is for an act of saying to determine (to carry) an

implicature, he is clear that what is implicated is not determined (carried) by what

is said. Investigating the metaphysics of utterance actsespecially the distinction

between the act of saying something, and what is saidwould be helpful here. For

merely pointing out that what is said and what is implicated are both determined byan utterance act does not yet reveal the relation between what is implicated and

what is said. We need more information about the connection between what is

implicated and an utterance act, and between what is said and an utterance act, in

4 I mean utterance in Grices artificially wide sense: any case of doing x or producing x by the

performance of which U meant that so-and-so (Grice, 1989f: 118) But note that in this essay I am not

assuming Grices analysis of U meant that x in terms of reciprocal intentions. However, I am assuming

that the examples I present are all intuitively clear cases of a speaker meaning something. For present

purposes I leave open the question how to analyze speaker meaning. (It may turn out that, upon accepting

a particular account of speaker meaning, one or two of the cases I present turn out not to be cases of a

speaker meaning something. If so, my argument would not be undermined because the remaining cases

would be enough to support my conclusions. I present a battery of cases; the loss of one or two will not

matter.)



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order to conclude something about the relation between what is implicated and what

is said. Analyzing the metaphysics of acts could help in developing a conceptual

argument concluding that what is implicated does not always depend on what is

said. Although a better understanding of the metaphysics of acts would likely behelpful, I argue in this paper by counterexample; I will produce some cases in which,

I claim, what is conversationally implicated does not depend on what is said.

My claim is that what is implicated by an act of utterance is, in some cases, not

dependent on what is said by that act of utterance. This may seem obvious. How-

ever, as I have mentioned, many Griceans disagree, assumingsometimes tacitly

that all conversational implicatures depend on what is said. And, I believe, this

mistake leads them astray. If so, correcting this mistake matters, even if I am just

explicating Grices position. For example, Re canati explicitly states that conversa-

tional implicatures always depend on what is said:

Grice said that the presence of an implicature must be capable of being worked

out (Grice 1989c: 31) For an implicature to be worked out, two conditions

must be satisfied: (i) both what is said and what is implied must be grasped (ii)

the inferential connection between them must also be grasped. . . (Re canati,

1993: 245)5

According to Re canati, the hearer always grasps an inferential connection from

what is said to what is implicated. Re canati is apparently committed to (A), the

dependency claim I mentioned earlier:(A)understanding the explicature of an utterance is necessary for understanding the

conversational implicatures of that utterance.

It is easy to come away with this picture after reading Grice, who sometimes

sounds as if he believes that what is conversationally implicated is always calculated

from what is said by means of simple inferences. At one point, Grice remarks that

what is implicated is built on what is said. (Grice, 1989b: 49)

(A) is too strong. Suppose John says Its hot in here, suggesting that he wants

someone to turn on the air conditioner. Alice hears him, understands the explicature,

5 Re canati thinks that both speaker and hearer must be capable of working out the implicatures. The

passage continues:. . .

Many followers of Grice have (wrongly) interpreted this as requiring that the theorist be capable of

working out whatever conversational implicature is posited to explain a given semantic phenomenon;

but Grice clearly had in mind the participants in the talk-exchange themselves: it is the speaker and

hearer who must be capable of working out the implicatures, and this entails that they have conscious

access both to what is said and what is implicated.

I am not sure why Re canati thinks thespeaker needs to be capable of working out the implicatures because we

may want the speaker to be able to unintentionally implicate something. (Although this runs against Grices

view of speakers meaning as reducible to speakers intentions, I do not see why we need to hold Grices

position on meaning in order to accept his picture of conversational implicature.) In the text, I only take the

hearer into account in arguing against proposals for necessary conditions for the presence of a conversational

implicature. I do not think this matters because if the condition based on the hearer alone is not necessary,

then the (more restrictive) related condition based on both hearer and speaker is not necessary.



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and calculates the implicature on the basis of the explicature and other features of

the context. Alice gets up and turns on the air conditioner. Ben is there too, and

doesnt catch what John says, but seeing John sweating and Alice moving toward

the air conditioner also concludes that John wants someone to turn on the air con-ditioner. Ben understands the conversational implicature. However, Ben does not

understand the explicature.6

Recall that Grice says that

the presence of a conversational implicature must be capable of being worked

out; for even if it can in fact be intuitively grasped, unless the intuition is

replaceable by an argument, the implicature (if present at all) will not count as a

conversational implicature; it will be a conventional implicature. (Grice,

1989a: 31)

This suggests that what makes for a conversational implicature is, in part, that

therebe a computational path from what is said to the implicature, not whether this

path is taken. So this leads to another proposal for dependency between what is

implicated and what is said:

(B) an utterance cannot express a conversational implicature unless it expresses an

explicature, and there is a reasonable path of inference, requiring the

explicature, for a hearer to calculate theimplicature.

Despite what he says, Re canati may hold (B) rather than the implausible (A). If

so, I still think he is mistaken; here are four examples to show that claim (B) is

incorrect.

1. An explicature may be present but not needed to calculate the conversational

implicature:

Suppose Fred and Ethel are having a discussion in the presence of a 5 year old

child. [cf Grice (1989c: 36)] Fred and Ethel are merrily talking, when suddenly,

Ethel lowers her voice to a whisper and says that the child is naughty. Fred doesnot hear what Ethel says. Still, he reasons that Ethel has implicated that she

does not want the child to understand because Ethel has violated the con-

versational maxim of Manner, which says to avoid obscurity of expression.

The explicature is not needed in this reasoning; Ethel could have said almost

anything and the same conversational implicature would have been generated.

6 Perhaps someone may respond that whatever Ben understands, it is not a conversational implicature

because he has not reached his understanding in the right sort of wayhe has understood something with

the same content as the conversational implicature, but he has not understood it qua conversational

implicature. If the objection is that for Ben to understand it qua conversational implicature, Ben must

infer it on the basis of the explicature, then the objection begs the question because it assumes (A). But

even if the objector can hold on to (A) in the face of this example, the proposed counterexamples to (B)

(coming soon) also serve as counterexamples to (A).



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(Another example: suppose you are lost in a place where English is rarely

understood. You walk up to a stranger and ask Do you speak English? He

replies Its nice weather were having today, isnt it? Plausibly, the stranger

has conversationally implicated that he speaks English.)

2. Its possible to generate a conversational implicature even though no expli-

cature is expressed:

(a telephone conversation)

Sally: What did you end up doing last night?

Jack: Oh, we went to that new movie. Why didnt you come? Did you have a

fight with your husband again?

(pause. Sally says nothing.)

Jack: Well, I hope you work things out somehow.

This conversation seems perfectly natural. Here is a plausible analysis: in remain-

ing silent, Sally conversationally implicates that she does not want to talk about

what happened the night before, and perhaps also conversationally implicates that

she has indeed had a fight with her husband. However, Sally has clearly said noth-

ingher act of remaining silent expresses no explicature.7

3. A fragment of an explicature is enough to generate a conversational implicature:

Nathan and June are discussing the weather in places they have been. Nathanstarts to say In Amarillo, Texas, its hot and dusty. However, a car alarm

goes off as Nathan speaks, and Nathan only says In Amarillo, Texas. . . Plau-

sibly, Nathans utterance does not express an explicature, but still con-

versationally implicates that Nathan has been in Amarillo.

4. An explicature may be unrelated to the conversational implicature:

Roy is sitting in his office staring at the wall. Emilia walks in and starts asking

Roy questions about a lecture they both attended. After answering each question

briefly and truthfully, Roy closes his mouth and looks at Emilia. Emilia gets the

message that Roy is not interested in conversing at that moment. Emilia goes

away. Plausibly, Roy would be failing to be a good conversational participant

unless he is conversationally implicating that he is not interested in being a

conversational participant at the moment. Roys comments on the lecture are

unrelated to this conversational implicature.

In each of these examples, I claim, a conversational implicature is carried by an

act of utterance with no inferential path to the conversational implicature requiring

an explicature. If so, then claim (B) is incorrect.

7 Grice gives a related example in which an utterance of Mrs. X is an old bag is followed by a

moment of stunned silence, and then a shift in topic. (Grice, 1989c: 35) Grice says there is a conversational

implicature that a social gaffe has been committed.



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There are two main considerations in favor of the claim that, in these examples,

there are indeed such conversational implicatures. First, these cases bear all the

marks of conversational implicature. As I have explained, conversational impli-

cature is a particular kind of indirect communication: the hearer infers a conversa-tional implicature on the basis of the assumption of the Cooperative Principle; and it

is an inference that the speaker can expect the hearer to work out. Consider, for

example, the third case. There, June concludes that Nathan has been in Amarillo to

preserve the assumption that Nathan, being a cooperative conversationalist, was

about to say something relevant. And Nathan expected June to draw this conclusion

on the basis of the utterence he was trying make. Note that each of the other pur-

ported examples also satisfy the description I have given of a conversational impli-

cature. Someone might complain that, because I have not applied the standard tests

for conversational implicatures, I have failed to demonstrate conclusively that these

are indeed conversational implicatures. This complaint is misplaced. For if I am

correct that what is implicated does not depend on what is said, then we need to

reconsider whether the standard tests are correct. We cannot simply apply the tests

blindly.8

The second main consideration in favor of concluding that these are indeed con-

versational implicatures is that there is no theoretically interesting distinction

between the examples I have given, and standard cases of conversational impli-

cature. For example, compare the letter of recommendation case (often held up as a

8

For readers who wish to have this last point explained in detail: Levinson (1983: Chapter 3) lists fourmain properties of conversational implicature: Non-Detachability, Cancellability, Calculability, Non-

Conventionality. Levinson claims that possession of the properties is necessary and sufficient for some-

thing to be a conversational implicature. Note first that if Re canati is correct, the conditions are not

jointly sufficient to distinguish what is said from what is implicated. For, according to Recanati, elements

of what is said may have the same properties as conversational implicatures. So, in the context of this

essay, we cannot simply assume that testing for these four properties will isolate a conversational impli-

cature. Furthermore, if I am correct, Non-Detachability is not a property shared by all conversational

implicatures. (A Non-Detachable implicature is a conversational implicature that is preserved when what

is said is the same, but said in a different way.) If a conversational implicature conveyed by an utterance U

depends not on what is said, but on some other feature of U, then it may, perhaps, not be conveyed by a

different utterance, U0 saying the same thing. For U0 may not share the relevant features of U. Non-

Detachability is better seen as a derived property. A conversational implicature is Non-Detachable when

(and because) it has a certain relation to what is said. If a conversational implicature depends on what is

said by an utterance U, and on no other features of U, then that implicature is Non-Detachable. Perhaps

Non-Detachability has been seen as a property of conversational implicatures because theorists have

focused on implicatures that depend only on what is said. (It has been suggested that Non-Detachability

admits exceptions: some implicatures generated by violations of the Maxims of Manner are detachable.

(Levinson, 2000: 15) If I am correct, these exceptions are, instead, symptoms of the dependency of these

implicatures on features of the utterance apart from what is said.). For what it is worth, the other stan-

dard properties are possessed by the examples. 1. Cancellability: an inference to a Cancellable implicature

can be defeated without contradiction by adding further premises. I will not laboriously work through all

the cases, but here is one example: when the car alarm stops, Nathan could add, . . . although I have

never been to Amarillo. 2. Calculability is a property I have already discussed and the examples I

have given are all clearly Calculable. 3. The last main property of conversational implicature is Non-

Conventionality. But since Cancellability indicates Non-Conventionality, we may conclude that the

examples display this property too.



12/23

paradigm of conversational implicature) to the case where Sally remains silent.

Notice that the essential premise needed by the letters recipient to conclude that the

professor is implicating that the candidate is bad at philosophy is not what the

professor said, but what he did not say.9 The recipient needs to know that the pro-fessor remained silent about the candidates philosophical abilities. This striking

parallel between the two cases makes it difficult to see how someone could maintain

that one is a case of conversational implicature, and one is not. We can make this

point even more vivid by considering the following variant of the letter of recom-

mendation case. Instead of sending a letter saying that the candidate has excellent

penmanship, the professor sends a blank sheet of paper. Note the parallel reasoning:

Original Case:

1. The professor wrote the candidates penmanship is excellent and nothing

more.

2. So, the professor said nothing about the candidates philosophical abilities.

3. So, the professor is suggesting that the candidate is no good at philosophy.

New Case:

1. The professor sent a blank piece of paper and nothing more.

2. So, the professor said nothing about the candidates philosophical abilities.

3. So, the professor is suggesting that the candidate is no good at philosophy.

The step from 1 to 2 is an entailment. 2 follows from 1, given that someone who

sends no more than a blank piece of paper says nothing. The other inferences (2 to 3,

and 2 to 3) are identical. But it is the inference from 2 to 3 that makes the Original

Case a case of conversational implicature. For 3 is the conclusion drawn on the

assumption that the professor is being cooperative. So if the Original Case is a case

of conversational implicature, then surely the New Case is too. But in the New Case,

like the case of Sally, what is implicated does not depend on what is said, because

nothing is said.

Someone might raise the following objection. If we accept that examples 14 dis-play conversational implicatures, then we must admit the following unpleasant

conclusion: gestures and facial expressions can generate conversational implicatures.

In reply: the unpleasant conclusion does not follow, if implicating is restricted to

linguistic acts. For gestures and facial expressions are not linguistic acts, while the

examples I have given are linguistic acts. Thus, my examples show nothing about

non-linguistic acts. Perhaps the objector could press harder, and try to argue that

the examples I have given are not linguistic acts. I am not sure what to make of this

objection without a clear statement of the distinction between linguistic and non-

linguistic acts. Such an approach might work against the second examplesilence

9 Gabriel Uzquiano pointed this out to me.



13/23


14/23

Availability Principle, states that we ought to respect our pretheoretical intuitions

about whether something is said, or only hinted or suggested. In Re canatis words:

Availability Principle: in deciding whether a pragmatically determined aspect ofan utterance meaning is part of what is said, that is, in making a decision con-

cerning what is said, we should always try to preserve our pre-theoretic intui-

tions on the matter. (Re canati, 1993: 248)

The Availability Principle is important because it is used to justify the claim of

semantic underdetermination (that there are significant pragmatic elements in what is

said). Re canati does not present the Availability Principle as a criterion that will decide

every case; sometimes intuition does not tell us clearly which way to go in separating

what is said from what is implicated. Instead, Re canati maintains that when a theorist

claims that something is said where pretheoretical intuition has it that it is not said, by

the Availability Principle, we ought to reject the theorists claim. For example,

according to some theorists, whenever Janice utters John has three children,

Janice says that John has at least three children, and implicates that John has no

more than three children.11 I think we can agree that there is no intuition supporting

this analysis, and that there is in fact an intuition that, on some occasions, Janice says

that John has exactly three children. According to Re canati, since intuition conflicts

with the analysis, we should, by the Availability Principle, reject the analysis.

Re canati says that his view of the relationship between what is implicated and

what is said entails the Availability Principle: . . .the speaker and hearer. . must be

capable of working out the implicatures, and this entails that they have consciousaccess both to what is said and what is implicated. Re canatis idea seems to be that

since, according to Grice, conversational implicatures must be calculable, there is a

requirement on conversational implicatures: if a hearer understands a conversa-

tional implicature then it is possible for the hearer to (consciously) grasp both what

is said and the inferential connection between what is said and what is implicated. If

it is possible for them to grasp the inferential connection between what is said and

what is implicated, then they can consciously separate what is said from what is

implicated. If speaker and hearer can consciously separate what is said from what is

implicated, we have reason to trust their intuitions about what is said, and so we should

accept the Availability Principle. This reasoning is rather unclear but if the examples Ihave just presented are correct, it cannot even get off the ground. Pointing out, as I did

earlier, that in some cases what is said is not required (or is even irrelevant) in calculating

what is implicated shows that Re canatis justification of the Availability Principle

will not work. For if, in some cases, what is said is not required to calculate what is

implicated, then there is no reason to agree that an inferential connection between

what is said and what is implicated can always be consciously grasped.

11 Some may suppose that this analysis is supported by a cancellability test: if we can cancel the

suggestion that John has no more than three children (John has three children. He may even have four.

) then what is cancelled must be an implicature. However, what is under discussion here is the way to

distinguish what is said from what is implicated. If Recanati is right, then cancellability does not distin-

guish what is said from what is implicated. So, in evaluating the Availability Principle, we cannot appeal

to a cancellability test without independent support for a such a test.



15/23

Perhaps Re canati would respond by weakening the Availability Principle to apply

only in cases where dependency holds. So weakened, the Availability Principle

would not hold generally for all cases of conversational implicature. This weakened

position may be unattractive to those now convinced that cases of conversationalimplicature where dependency holds are not interestingly different from cases of

conversational implicature where dependency fails to hold. Still, apparently, the

weakened position is tenable. Someone may believe that cases of conversational

implicature where dependency holds are interestingly different because the Avail-

ability Principle applies in these cases. So let us suppose that Re canati is only trying

to defend a Weak Availability Principle which only applies when what is implicated

depends on what is said. In this case, further argument is needed to undermine his

reasoning; pointing out that some conversational implicatures fail to depend on

what is said is now beside the point.

Here we need to ask what sort of dependency is required to support the Weak

Availability Principle. Now, claim (A) helps bolster something like Re canatis rea-

soning in favor of the Weak Availability Principle. For if understanding what is said

is necessary for understanding what is implicated, and if understanding is conscious,

then, more or less plausibly, what is implicated must be consciously calculated from

what is said. Unfortunately for the defender of the Weak Availability Principle,

there is probably no case that satisfies claim (A). Recalling the earlier example of the

air-conditioner, we may press an argument that in any case of conversational

implicature, we can imagine a hearer who misunderstands what is said, and then, by

luck or mistake, understands what is implicated. It thus seems always possible for ahearer to understand a conversational implicature without understanding what is

said. So it seems always possible for a hearer to understand what is implicated

without what is said being consciously accessible to them.

Unlike (A), dependency claim (B) is plausible in some cases. However, (B)-type

dependency will not support an argument for the Weak Availability Principle. (B)

only requires that there be a reasonable path from what is said to what is implicated,

not that that path be followed. (B) makes no claim about the psychological pro-

cesses actually involved in utterance understanding. Thus it seems puzzling how one

could conclude that what is implicated must be consciously separable from what is

said when a (B)-like dependency holds.Although I have only briefly considered (A) and (B), the problem is clear. We need

a claim about psychological processing to argue for the Weak Availability Principle.

(A)-dependency can be construed psychologically, but (A)-dependency is implau-

sible. (B)-dependency, although plausible, is metaphysical rather than psychological.

I believe that there is a general argument lurking here against the drawing of psy-

chological conclusions from metaphysical theses about communication (and this is

something I plan to pursue in future work). For now, I only claim that, barring a

plausible, psychological construal of dependency, neither the Availability Principle

nor the Weak Availability Principle have been justified.

I have accomplished two things so far. First, I have taken steps to clarify therelationship between saying and implicating. I have given examples that I think

show that the Gricean should not hold that what is implicated depends on what is



16/23

said, when dependency is spelled out in the most obvious ways, (A) and (B).

Although this alone does not justify concluding that the Gricean should deny that

what is implicated depends on what is said, it at least partly justifies this conclusion.

Second, I have traced a connection between the question of dependency and theissue of how to draw a line between semantics and pragmatics. For Recanati, a

supposed dependency between what is said and what is implicated leads to the thesis

of semantic underdetermination, by way of the Availability Principle. Rejecting

dependency (in the form of (A) and (B)) leaves the Availability Principle in need of

justification, and the thesis of semantic underdetermination in doubt. Since the

Availability Principle was supposed to help separate what is said from what is

implicated, we might worry, as a result, that rejecting dependency leaves us unable

to draw an interesting and useful line between what is said and what is implicated.

This suspicion is groundless, as I will now try to show.

2.

I shall now offer a speculative proposal to distinguish what is said from what is

implicated without dependency, and argue that the distinction so drawn is useful

and interesting. I will distinguish what is said from what is implicated by giving a

criterion for saying that will reduce the theoretical burden taken up by Grices (and

Re canatis) concept of what is said; my notion of what is said will capture some, but

not all, of the features of Grices (or Re canatis) notion of what is said. For Grice,

12

what is said is both

(X) the truth-conditional content of an utterance,

and

(Y) closely tied to the conventional meaning of the words uttered.

Re canati keeps (X) but argues that (Y) should be relaxed. I propose to keep (X),

but set aside (Y) in some cases. I will first compare my concept of what is said toGrices and Re canatis. I will then motivate my analysis of what is said by giving

some examples to suggest that sometimes the truth conditional content of an utter-

ance is unrelated to the conventional meaning of the words used. Then, I will sketch

my analysis of what is said. Finally, I will give reason to think that this version of

the saying/implicating distinction is theoretically useful and interesting.

If Re canati is right, then (X) and (Y) are in tension. Re canati argues that (Y)

should be relaxed; the Availability Principle (coupled with some other premises)

leads him to conclude that sometimes what is said is not so closely related to the

conventional meaning of the words uttered. This is his thesis of semantic under-

12 The view I am attributing to Grice in this section is an interpretation. I am not at all sure if the view

I am here calling Grices is indeed Grices.



17/23

determination. Recall Janices utterance of John has three children. On some

occasions, intuitively, Janice says that John has exactly three children, not that John

has at least three children. If the conventional meaning of the words uttered in a

context only determines the proposition that John has at least three children, andnot the proposition that John has exactly three children, then the conventional

meaning of the words uttered does not fully determine what is said. Re canati thinks

that examples like this help to show that there are two levels of pragmatics. The first

level fills the (purported) gap between semantics and what is said. The second level

explains how what is said determines conversational implicatures.

We may contrast Re canati with Grice. Intuitive judgments of what is said lead

Re canati to conclude that (Y) should be relaxed. Grice, on the other hand, is willing

to give up some intuitive judgments about what is said for the sake of theoretical

simplicity. Grice, in the interests of simplicity, might hold that when someone utters

John has three children, he says that John has at least three children, and (some-

times) implicates that John has at most three children. This goes against an intuitive

judgment. Grice retains both (X) and (Y) at the expense of giving up some intuitive

judgments.

Like Re canati and Grice, I wish to maintain that what is said is the truth-conditional

content of an utterance. Like Re canati but unlike Grice, I think that in some cases

what is said may be rather distantly related to the conventional meaning of the

words uttered; in some cases (Y) should be relaxed. Unlike both Re canati and Grice,

I think that in some cases what is said may bear no relation to the conventional

meaning of the words uttered; in some cases (Y) should be suspended. In otherwords, I hold that the truth-conditional content of an utterance is, on some occa-

sions, unrelated or only distantly related to the semantic features of the words

uttered. While I do not have an argument to show that this possibility occurs, the

following examples are suggestive.

1. Slips of the tongue: Suppose I utter the sentence Im going to Wordsworth

today to buy a bunch of new looks. There is some intuition that I said that

Im going to Wordsworth today to buy a bunch of new books; I can speak

truly about books without using the word books. I used the word look, but

what I said does not depend on the meaning of look.13

2. Malapropism (cf Davidson, 1986): a malapropism is an often humorous

substitution of one word for another: What a nice derangement of acorns

you have on your web page! I exclaim. Thanks, but these arent icons,

theyre JPEGS, my friend replies. Since this seems like a coherent con-

versation (at least among computer lovers), there is reason to think that I

said just what I would have said if instead I had exclaimed What a nice

arrangement of icons you have on your web page!.

13 I think its also true that I said Im going to Wordsworth today to buy a bunch of new looks.

Carston (1988) (crediting Kempson) calls this the quotational sense of say. Im not sure we need to posit

different senses of say here, but I do maintain that there is an intuition that it is true that I said some-

thing about books, not about looks.



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3. Metaphor: if I say the sea is glass on a calm day, it seems that what I said

may well be true even though the sea is not literally made of glass. The same

sentence can be used non-metaphorically to say something false. This sug-

gests that what is said when I speak metaphorically can be far removed fromthe ordinary, conventional meaning of the words I use and how they are put

together.14

4. (cf Grice, 1989d: 181) Im talking with you about a sleazy looking guy sitting

across the room. We both know that he works as a management consultant

and has not uttered a word about religion in his life. I utter Hes just an

evangelist meaning that he is a sanctimonious money-grubber. I can speak

truly about the sleazy guy although he has never discussed religion; what I

said has nothing to do with religion.15

5. Suppose, for ninety-eight days, after dinner, Jennifer says that the dinner

tasted good. However, each day she uses different words (The meal was

delicious, the dinner was tasty and so on.) On the ninety-ninth day, in the

same tone of voice as before, she announces the zutness was ertly. We can

imagine that she said the same thing she said all along, although zutness and

ertly do not mean anything in English. Suppose, on the hundredth day, she

announces the french horn was happy. Could we not imagine that she said

the same thing she said all along, without supposing that she has false beliefs

about the words she used?

In each of these cases, there is an implicature account available: what I am takingto be said is actually only conversationally implicated. For example, someone may

claim that, in the case of the metaphorical use of the sea is glass, what I said is

false, although I have conversationally implicated something true. (Grice analyzes

some cases of metaphor this way in Logic and Conversation.) According to such

an account, what is said remains closely tied to the conventional meaning of the

words used. Or, we may offer an account similar to Recanatis, in which what is said

in the metaphor case is, as I claim it to be, true, yet is derived by both semantic and

pragmatic means from the conventional meaning of the words used. Or, we may

claim that glass is ambiguous between a literal and a metaphorical sense. I am not

offering knockdown reasons that such accounts are mistaken; these examples areonly suggestive. I only claim that there is intuition to support the position that

sometimes what is said is not only distant from conventional meaning, it is unrelated

to it; in some cases the truth-conditional content is not derived from the conven-

tional meaning of the words used; in some cases (Y) should be set aside.

14 Compare N. Goodmans reply to D. Davidsons claim (Davidson, 1984) that most metaphors are

trivially and literally false: The lake is a sapphire is. . literally false but metaphorically true, while

Muddy Pond is a sapphire is both literally and metaphorically false. (Goodman, 1979: 126) (Meta-

phorically true for Goodman means that the sentence taken metaphorically is true.)15 In later work, Grice (1989d: 181) separates dictiveness from formality. Dictiveness is saying (or

what is said) and formality is conventionality (or what is conventional). He gives much the same example,

and says that it shows dictiveness without formality (that is saying without conventionality).



19/23

I will now give an analysis of saying that will permit (Y) to sometimes be set aside.

I will have shown that my proposal should be preferred to Grices and Re canatis if I

can show that it accounts for data as simply as Re canati or Grice, yet accom-

modates relevant intuitions that they fail to account for. The first step in showingthis is to develop the proposal. To the extent that the proposal is sketchy the argu-

ment is incomplete. (When the proposal is fully developed, I would go on to argue

that Re canatis view is too complicated because his pragmatics level 1 duplicates

much of pragmatics level 2. I would also argue that Grices view seems to treat

intuitions arbitrarily. These intuitions are the main reason for accepting the saying/

implicating distinction. Yet sometimes strong intuitions are set aside, with no reason

apart from theoretical economy. I will not spell out these arguments here.)

Suppose S performs an act of utterance U. My suggestion is that S says that p is

true when the following three conditions are met:

1. (association) p is a proposition associated with U

2. (explicitness) S bears an explicit attitude to p

3. (prominence) p is as prominent as any other proposition satisfying 1 and 2

Before working to spell out these conditions, let me explain what they accomplish.

Condition 1 requires that what is said be appropriately related to the act of utter-

ance, ruling out the possibility that S can say something that is unconnected to the

act S performs. What counts as appropriately related is a question I will leave open.

At least, someone who likes Grices story about conversational implicature wouldcount the conversational implicatures conveyed by an utterance to be appropriately

related to that utterance. Condition 1 will rule out some propositions as not said.

For instance, suppose that a sneeze is an act. We may think that the act of sneezing

determines no proposition, so no propositions meet condition 1; when I sneeze I do

not say anything.

Condition 2 is supposed to ensure that S is related to p in an appropriate way. It is

supposed to rule out possibilities like the analysis in which on all occasions when

Janice utters John has three children she says that John has at least three children.

For on some occasions Janice does not bear the right attitude to the proposition that

John has at least three children- she is not aware of it, has never considered it. (WhatI have in mind here is a tacit/explicit distinction, but I do not mean to claim that

bearing an explicit attitude toward a proposition requires being aware of it. I am

supposing that lack of awareness is evidence of the absence of an explicit attitude.)

Condition 2 also rules out the possibility that in uttering the Wordsworth sentence, I

was saying anything about looks. In some cases, condition 2 may rule out allpro-

positions closely tied to the conventional meaning of the words uttered. If so, it does

the work of suspending (Y).

Condition 3 is the reformulation of (Y). In normal cases, the most prominent

proposition will just be the proposition that is most closely tied to the conventional

meaning of the words used. So, in normal cases, what is said will be closely tied to theconventional meaning of words. In other cases, the proposition most closely tied to

conventional meaning will be ruled out by Condition 2, and some other proposition



20/23

will count as what is said. This is what will happen in the metaphor case, and the

other suggestive cases mentioned earlier.16

On the proposed picture, no dependency has been presumed between what is said

and what is implicatedthe proposed picture accommodates each possibility fordependency. In a particular case, it may be that what is implicated depends on what

is said, or there is no dependency between what is said and what is implicated, or

what is said depends on what is implicated. This last possibility may be surprising.

But consider the lover of conversational implicature who thinks that some of the

propositions satisfying Condition 1 are the conversational implicatures of the utter-

ance. The proposed picture holds open the possibility that what is said is sometimes

a conversational implicature: the most prominent proposition satisfying both Con-

ditions 1 and 2 may be a conversational implicature. So, in a sense, sometimes what

is said may depend on what is implicatedin the sense that sometimes what is said

is a conversational implicature.

The proposed account of saying is supposed to help point to a psychological descrip-

tion of the processes involved in making and understanding utterances. The psycholo-

gical account will hopefully explain what the intuitions of directness versus indirectness

are intuitions of. I will now explain the psychological relevance of the three conditions.

When a speaker prepares to make an utterance, and then does utter something,

certain psychological processes occur. A description of these processes will make

reference to the attitudes that the speaker takes to various propositions. For

instance, suppose the speaker thinks that his friends hat is ugly, and wants him to

take it off, but not wanting to offend his friend, he decides to only ask if he couldtake a closer look at it. Or suppose that the speaker decides to tease his friend about

the hat. He thinks the hat is ugly, and knows that the friend is unusually sensitive

about his appearance. So he decides to unctuously say what an extraordinarily

beautiful hat! realizing that the friend will wonder why he said that, and get ner-

vous. Each of these stories of the speakers reasoning process describes the speaker

as believing some things, desiring some things, rejecting other things. The point of

Condition 2 is that the speaker cannot say something unless he reasons about it

before speaking. Someone who is reading a newspaper aloud without understanding

is not saying anything; he is simply mouthing the words. Someone who makes a slip

of the tongue hasnt said what the mistaken sentence says. A description of thepsychological process leading the speaker to speak on some occasion will describe

the speaker as holding attitudes to certain propositions. So by explicit in Condi-

tion 2, I mean explicitly involved in the reasoning leading to an utterance.

An explanation of prominence will help explain intuitions about saying. At pre-

sent, I have but sketchy ideas about prominence. Prominence is a relation between

propositions, with respect to an utterance. Of two propositions, the proposition that

is more prominent (with respect to an utterance) is the proposition that is easier to

16 One might think that Condition 3 could, on its own, cause the suspension of (Y). However, it ought

to be a constraint on measures of prominence that propositions more closely tied to conventional meaning

are more prominent than other propositions. (If more than one proposition has the highest prominence,

then S has said more than one thing by the same utterance.)



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derive17 by a hearer of the utterance. This explanation of prominence will help

explain intuitions about saying, if when people perform derivations, particular psy-

chological processes occur. And, since hearers can misderive things, or perform

longer derivations than necessary, some intuitions about saying can count as mis-taken, and intuitions between people may differ.

The associated propositions admitted by Condition 1 may include what is nor-

mally thought of as the content of an utterance, as well as presuppositions and

implicatures, and perhaps even some propositions present in the current context. For

someone who accepts Grices account of meaning, x is associated with U if S meant x

by his utterance U, where this is analyzed in Grices way in terms of intentions.18

Since, at the moment, I am unable to provide more detail about the proposed

picture, I will conclude by comparing it to Re canatis view. One difference between

Re canatis view and the proposed picture is that Re canati presumes that in all cases

what is said is derived from the conventional meanings of words (along with other

things). Semantics along with pragmatics level 1 explains how, given a context, what

is said is derived from the conventional meaning of the words uttered and how they

are put together. Re canatis view demands a derivation starting from conventional

meaning to what is said, for each case of saying; whenever a theoretically unex-

plained case of saying is found, there is pressure to either change the semantics, or

expand the derivational possibilities of pragmatics level 1. On the proposed picture,

17 Perhaps prominence may be defined as derivational dependence: if all (reasonable) derivations of

proposition q (from an utterance in a context) require proposition p then p is more prominent than q. Inthe letter of recommendation case, for instance, suppose that deriving the proposition that the candidate

is bad at philosophy requires the proposition that the candidates penmanship is excellent. This would

mean that the proposition that the candidate is bad at philosophy is less prominent then the proposition

that the candidates penmanship is excellent. So the speaker does not say that the candidate is bad at

philosophy. (Hence, to some degree, we can incorporate Re canatis thought that inferential dependency

of what is implicated on what is said underlies intuitions about the distinction between saying and

implicating.) However, derivational dependence is not enough to characterize prominence because there

are many propositions that are derivationally independent from each other. (Two propositions are deri-

vationally independent if neither is derivationally dependent on the other.) For example, in the examples

in section I, what is implicated is derivationally independent of what is said, so prominence characterized

as derivational dependence is not enough to distinguish what is said from what is implicated for these

examples. A better measure of prominence is derivational length: if the shortest derivation of p (from anutterance in a context) is shorter than the shortest derivation of q, then p is more prominent than q. This

may not be enough. It may be that when measuring prominence we will need to rank the sources of

derivations, so that, for instance, propositions that can be derived from the uttered sentence without

reference to the context will count as more prominent than propositions derived from other things. Such

a ranking will make propositions more closely associated with conventional meaning more prominent.18 See Grice (1989a) for Grices analysis. (Note that I am not endorsing Grices account of meaning in

this essay; I am just using it as an example.) Someone adopting Grices account of meaning in spelling

out Condition 1 may not need Condition 2 because everything that S meant seems to meet the explicit-

ness condition. However, other accounts of what propositions are associated with an utterance will need

Condition 2, so I keep Condition 2 separate. For example, someone may think that some implicatures

are unintended: suppose the hearer can infer that the speaker is tired by their rate of speech and tone of

voice. Someone could think that the proposition that the speaker is tired is associated with the utterance,

but fails to be in the running for what is said because it fails Condition 2. For such a theorist, Condition

2 is not redundant.



22/23


23/23

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Carston, Robyn, 1988. Implicature, explicature, and truth-theoretic semantics. In: Kempson, R.M. (Ed.),Mental Representations: The Interface Between Language and Reality, Cambridge University Press,

Cambridge, pp. 155181.

Davidson, Donald, 1984. What metaphors mean. In: Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation. Clarendon

Press, Oxford, UK, pp. 245264.

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