[lit-ideas] Grice's Emotions
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2013 09:53:01 -0400 (EDT)
In a message dated 10/31/2013 5:12:11 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
torgeir_fjeld@xxxxxxxx writes:
How do we distinguish "emotional meaning" from "word meaning"?
Grice famously wrote on "Meaning". This paper was meant to be read (only)
at the Philosophical Club, Oxford. Strawson re-typed it (or typed it), sent
it to the Philosophical Review, and got it published, some 9 years later.
In the paper, Grice is playing with some notes he was tutoring on. In
particular, he was thinking that Peirce had everything too complicated with his
'theory' of signs. Instead, Grice started by examining how _he_ use the
lexeme, "mean" (not like Peirce). For example, Grice says that words are NOT
signs.
Oddly, Grice does NOT quote Peirce in "Meaning", but Stevenson, who had
written a volume on "Language and Ethics" (1944). His claim to fame: an
'emotive' dimension of meaning.
--- Yet, I would think that we should NOT apply 'emotional' as attached to
'meaning'.
----
T. Fjeld goes on:
"Is meaning in "emotional" hemisphere an alltogether separate language from
the world of words -- and, if that's the case, how on earth did the
resarchers manage to translate the "emotional" into plain Anglese?
(It says in tidbit that the "emonional" lingo is "quite independent" from
the "word" language.)"
In Grice's theory, which first got credited in 1952, by H. L. A. Hart, in a
review of Holloway, "Language and Intelligence", we should NOT concentrate
on 'language' and 'words' per se. It's ANYTHING that can mean. Grice uses
"x".
----
T. Fjeld goes on:
"The idea of a "natural" language prior to cultural intervention is age
old. Only with de Saussure has linguistics established as inherent (to the
discipline) that meaning (which is to say language) is convention based (and
/not/ a natural aspect of word -- onomatopoetics nonwithstanding). A meaning
established "simply by virtue of their acoustic properties" would be prior
to enculturation?"
Grice was aware of Hobbes's distinction between conventional and natural
signs, but since he avoided talk of 'sign', this did not do much for him.
Grice's use of 'natural' is NOT natural. He says that in
"He meant to order a tuna sandwich".
'mean' is used in a 'natural' "sense". He later corrected himself and
avoided speaking of different 'senses' of 'mean', and prefer 'use'. On top of
that, he claimed that 'natural' uses are more basic. For surely,
"Those black clouds mean rain'
seems more primitive than
"By uttering, "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?", Shakespeare
meant-nn (non-naturally) whether he should compare his addressee to a summer's
day.
Hobbes's idea can be traced back to Cratylus, by Plato, who (Cratylus)
claims that ALL words are onomatopoetic in origin, and hence that ALL mean
'naturally'. Socrates is convinced.
----
T. Fjeld concludes his interesting questionnaire:
"Did the thirty-two adults (who were selected according to what
[randomization] procedure?) speech thirty two different languages? Or just
one?? If
they all spake the same language was that shared with researcher(s)? What
effect would this languague situation have on the (peception of) natural
meaning to various sound (which may or may not have resemblede phonemes in
their
first language)? Gib's auf"
I don't think they spoke the same language. "Language", as Saussure noted,
is an abstraction. He meant 'speech'. Gardiner saw this when he published a
very influential book in Oxford, "The theory of speech and language".
Grice goes further and speaks of idio-meaning.
Idio- refers to a particular utterer. It's from idio-meaning that we must
proceed to a population of individuals. And there are complications.
I can use 'x' meaning thereby that p, just because I know that you, my
addressee, thinks that 'x' means that p.
His example is his use of a French utterance which means ("This cat is very
nice") to mean, "Help yourself a piece of cake"; Grice argues that by
uttering the French for "This cat is very nice", the utterer does mean that
the
utterer should help yourself with a piece of cake. Since, what matters,
are the intentions by the utterer into influencing his or her addresee in
particular views. There is nothing inherently or substantiallly or essentially
supervenient attached to 'x' by which 'x' means that p. Or not.
It's different with 'natural' uses: Those dark clouds cannot mean rain if
it's not gonna rain, or to use a more controversial example by Grice, the
current government budget cannot meant that we are going to have a hard year
if we are NOT going to have a hard year. Or not.
Cheers,
Speranza
----
The title is a pun on "Grice's intentions", Philosophical Studies.
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