Abstract
Making the distinction between semantics and pragmatics has proven to be a tricky task, leading to several problems that look like Gordian knots, or worse; perhaps semantics and pragmatics are so tangled that separating them is impossible, like squaring the circle. A widespread, plausible, Grice-inspired view of the distinction is threatened by what (Levinson Presumptive meanings. MIT Press/Bradford Books, Cambridge, Mass, 2000) called ‘Grice’s circle.’ Gricean inferences to derive the pragmatic content of the utterance (such as conversational implicatures) require the determination of what is said (also known as the ‘semantic content’ or the ‘literal truth-conditions’); but determining what is said (by processes of disambiguation, precisification, reference fixing, etc.) requires pragmatic inference. In a nutshell, pragmatic inference both requires and is required by the determination of what is said. Thus, there is no way to unravel semantics and pragmatics. In this paper, we will show how to square Grice’s circle. We untie the semantics/pragmatics knot, without using any of Alexander’s methods: slicing it with a sword or removing the (semantic) pin around which it was bound. The approach consists in assuming a minimal but truth-conditionally complete notion of semantic content (Perry Reference and reflexivity. CSLI Publications, Stanford, 2001), which doesn’t constitute what is said by the utterance, but does provide the required input for pragmatic reasoning.
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Notes
- 1.
The category of conventional implicatures doesn’t fit this picture, however, since being the result of the semantics (of certain words) of the sentence uttered, they do not contribute, according to Grice, to what is said.
- 2.
For a recent defense of Gazdar’s view on the semantics/pragmatics divide that attempts to avoid Grice’s circle, see Capone (2006).
- 3.
According to Bach (2011), Levinson makes a mistake to the extent that he sees Grice himself as having the views that lead to the circle. According to Bach, Levinson conflates two senses of ‘determine’: one related to what the grammar delivers in combination with context, the other with the psychological process of ascertaining the content by a hearer:
“He [Grice] never claimed that the hearer’s inference proceeds from first identifying what the speaker says to then considering whether there is any ostensible breach of the maxims and, if so and assuming the speaker is being cooperative and is aiming to communicate something, to seek a plausible candidate for what that could be.”
This is doubtless a correct point about Grice, and shows that the circle need not be temporal. But it does not explain how Gricean considerations are brought to bear prior to identifying what is said; this is what we try to do.
- 4.
See Recanati (2010).
- 5.
Grice included in his overall picture of meaning and communication non-linguistic ‘utterances’ like gestures and movements, but we will limit the discussion to linguistic utterances.
- 6.
These more technical terms used by philosophers are not without problems, since they can suggest that implicatures are not contents of the utterance, or they are not propositional. Gricean implicatures (at least conversational particularized ones) are also full-blown truth-conditional (though more or less indeterminate) contents of the utterance, but we ignore this issue here, and follow common practice using ‘content’ only to talk about the contents that are on the ‘what-is-said’ part of the Gricean divide.
- 7.
In American English this is an example of two words, ‘vice’ and ‘vise,’ both pronounced/vais/. Parallel considerations would apply. But we follow British English, and Grice, in taking it to be ambiguity.
- 8.
- 9.
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Acknowledgments
The first author is grateful to his colleagues of the group ‘Language, Action and Thought’ at the Institute for Logic, Cognition, Language and Information (ILCLI) for their comments and criticisms, especially to Eros Corazza, Joana Garmendia, María Ponte and Larraitz Zubeldia. This work was partially supported by a grant of the Basque Government (IT323-10 and IT780-13) and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (FFI2009-08574 and FF12012-37726).
The second author appreciates the support of the philosophy department at the University of California, Riverside, the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University, and conversations with many colleagues and students.
Both authors want to thank Alessandro Capone for his infinite enthusiasm and patience.
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Korta, K., Perry, J. (2013). Squaring the Circle. In: Capone, A., Lo Piparo, F., Carapezza, M. (eds) Perspectives on Pragmatics and Philosophy. Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01011-3_13
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