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LOGIC AND CONVERSATION*
H. P. GRICE
University of California, Berkeley
It is a commonplace of philosophical logic that there are, or appear
to be, divergences in meaning between, on the one hand, at least
some ofwhat I shall call the FORMAL devices-~, 1\, V, ::J, (x), 3(x), f x
(when these are given a standard two-valued interpretation)-and,
on the other, what are taken to be their analogs or counterparts in
natural language-such expressions as not, and, or, if, all, some (or at
least one), the. Some logicians may at some time have wanted to
claim that there are in fact no such divergences; but such claims, if
made at all, have been somewhat rashly made, and those suspected
of making them have been subjected to some pretty rough handling.
Those who concede that such divergences exist adhere, in the
main, to one or the other of two rival groups, which for the purposes
of this article I shall call the formalist and the informalist groups. An
outline of a not uncharacteristic formalist position may be given as
follows: Insofar as logicians are concerned with the formulation of
very general patterns of valid inference, the formal devices possess a
decisive advantage over their natural counterparts. For it will be possible
to construct in terms of the formal devices a system of very general
formulas, a considerable number of which can be regarded as, or
are closely related to, patterns of inferences the expression of which
involves some or all of the devices: Such a system may consist of a
0
Used by permission of the author and publisher from H. Paul Grice's William
James Lectures, delivered at Harvard University in 1967, and to be published by
Harvard University Press. Copyright 1975 by II. Paul Grice.
41
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42 H. P. Grice
certain set of simple formulas that must be acceptable if the devices
have the meaning that has been assigned to them, and an indefinite
number of further formulas, many of them less obviously acceptable,
each of which can be shown to be acceptable if the members of the
original set are acceptable. We have, thus, a way of handling dubiously
acceptable patterns of inference, and if, as is sometimes possible,
we can apply a decision procedure, we have an even better
way. Furthermore, from a philosophical point of view, the possession
by the natural counterparts of those elements in their meaning,
which they do not share with the corresponding formal devices, is to
be regarded as an imperfection of natural languages; the elements in
question are undesirable excrescences. For the presence of these
elements has the result that the concepts within which they appear
cannot be precisely/clearly defined, and that at least some statements
involving them cannot, in some circumstances, be assigned a definite
truth value; and the indefiniteness of these concepts is not only objectionable
in itself but leaves open the way to metaphysics-we
cannot be certain that none of these natural language expressions is
metaphysically 'loaded'. For these reasons, the expressions, as used
in natural speech, cannot be regarded as finally acceptable, and may
tum out to be, finally, not fully intelligible. The proper course is to
conceive and begin to construct an ideal language, incorporating the
formal devices, the sentences of which will be clear, determinate in
truth value, and certifiably free from metaphysical implications; the
foundations of science will now be philosophically secure, since the
statements of the scientist will be expressible (though not necessarily
actually expressed) within this ideal language. (I do not wish to
suggest that all formalists would accept the whole of this outline, but
I think that all would accept at least some part of it.)
To this, an informalist might reply in the following vein. The philosophical
demand for an ideal language rests· on certain assumptions
that should not be conceded; these are, that the primary yardstick by
which to judge the adequacy of a language is its ability to serve the
needs of science, that an expression cannot be guaranteed as fully intelligible
unless an explication or analysis of its meaning has been
provided, and that every explication or analysis must take the form of
a precise definition that is the expression/assertion of a logical equivalence.
Language serves many important purposes besides those of
scientific inquiry; we can know perfectly well what an expression
means (and so a fortiori that it is intelligible) without knowing its
analysis, and the provision of an analysis may (and usually does) consist
in the specification, as generalized as possible, of the conditions
Logic and Conversation 43
that count for or against the applicability or the expression being
analyzed. Moreover, while it is no doubt true that the t"ormal devices
are especially amenable to systematic treatment by the logician, it
remains the case that there are very many inferences and arguments,
expressed in natural language and not in terms of thes~ devices, that
are nevertheless recognizably valid. So there must be a place for an
unsimplified, and so more or less unsystematic, logic of the natural
counterparts of these devices; this logic may be aided and guided by
the simplified logic of the formal devices but cannot he Sllpplanted
by it; indeed, not only do the two logics difFer, hut somel111J<'S they
come into conflict; rules that hold for a formal device ma) 1 <>t hold
for its natural counterpart.
Now, on the general question of the place in philosophy of the reformation
of natural language, I shall, in this article, have nothing to
say. I shall confine myself to the dispute in its relatio11 to the alleged
divergences mentioned at the outset. I have, moreover, no intention
of entering the fray on behalf of either contestant. I ,, ish, rather, to
maintain that the common assumption of the conte·.tants that the
divergences do in fact exist is (broadly speaking) a common mistake,
and that the mistake arises from an inadequate attention to the nature
and importance of the conditions governing conversation. I shall,
therefore, proceed at once to inquire into the general r:onditions that,
in one way or another, apply to conversation as such, irrespective of
its subject matter.
IMPLICATURE
Suppose that A and B arc talking about a mutual friend, C, who is
now working in a bank. A asks B how C is getting on in his job, and
B replies, Oh quite well, I think; he likes his colleagues, and he
hasn't been to prison yet. At this point, A might well inquire what B
was implying, what he was suggesting, or even what he meant by
saying that C had not yet been to prison. The answer mi ~~ht be any
one of such things aS that C is the sort of person likely to ) ield to the
temptation provided by his occupation, that C's colleague' are really
very unpleasant and treacherous people, and so forth. It might, of
course, be quite unnecessary for A to make such an inquiry of B, the
answer to it being, in the context, clear in advance. I think it is clear
that whatever B implied, suggested, meant, etc., in this example, is
distinct from what B said, which was simply that C had not been to
prison yet. I wish to introduce, as terms of art, the verl implicate and
44 H. P. Grice
the related nouns implicature (cf. implying) and implicatum (cf.
what is implied). The point of this maneuver is to avoid having, on
each occasion, to choose between this or that member of the family
of verbs for which implicate is to do general duty. I shall, for the
time being at least, have to assume to a considerable extent an intuitive
understanding of the meaning of say in such contexts, and an
ability to recognize particular verbs as members of the family with
which implicate is associated. I can, however, make one or two
remarks that may help to clarify the more problematic of these assumptions,
namely, that connected with the meaning of the word
sa[/.
In the sense in which I am using the word say, I intend what
someone has said to be closely related to the conventional meaning
of the words (the sentence) he has uttered. Suppose someone to have
uttered the sentence He is in the grip of a vice. Given a knowledge
of the English language, but no knowledge of the circumstances of
the utterance, one would know something about what the speaker
had said, on the assumption that he was speaking standard English,
and speaking literally. One would know that he had said, about some
particular male person or animal x, that at the time of the utterance
(whatever that was), either (1) x was unable to rid himself of a certain
kind of bad character trait or (2) some part of x's person was caught in
a certain kind of tool or instrument (approximate account, of course).
But for a full identification of what the speaker had said, one would
need to know (a) the identity of x, (b) the time of utterance, and (c)
the meaning, on the particular occasion of utterance, of the phrase in
the grip of a vice [a decision between (1) and (2)]. This brief indication
of my use of say leaves it open whether a man who says (today)
Harold Wilson is a great man and another who says (also today) The
British Prime Minister is a great man would, if each knew that the
two singular terms had the same reference, have said the same thing.
But whatever decision is made about this· question, the apparatus
that I am about to provide will be capable of accounting for any
implicatures that might depend on the presence of one rather than
another of these singular terms in the sentence uttered. Such implicatures
would merely be related to different maxims.
In some cases the conventional meaning of the words used will determine
what is implicated, besides helping to determine what is
said. If I say (smugly), He is an Englishman; he is, therefore, brave, I
have certainly committed myself, by virtue of the meaning of my
words, to its being the case that his being brave is a consequence of
(follows from) his being an Englishman. But while I have said that
l Logic and Conversation 45
he is an Englishman, and said that he is brave, I do not want to say
that I have SAID (in the favored sense) that it follows from his being
an Englishman that he is brave, though I have certainly indicated,
and so implicated, that this is so. I do not want to say that my utterance
of this sentence would be, STIUCTLY SPEAKING, false should the
consequence in question fail to hold. So SOME implicatures are conventional,
unlike the one with which I introduced this discussion of
implicature.
I wish to represent a certain subclass of no11conventional implicaturcs,
which I shall call CONVJ<:IISATIONAL implicaturcs, as being essentially
connected with certain ge11cral features of discourse; so my
next step is to try to say what these features are.
The following may provide a first approximation to a general principle.
Our talk exchanges do not normally consist of a succession of
disconnected remarks, and would not be rational if they did. They
are characteristically, to some degree at least, cooperative efforts; and
each participant recognizes in them, to some extent, a common purpose
or set of purposes, or at least a mutually accepted direction.
This purpose or direction may be fixed from the start (e.g., by an initial
proposal of a question for discussion), or it may evolve during the
exchange; it may be fairly definite, or it may be so indefinite as to
leave very considerable latitude to the participants (as in a casual
conversation). But at each stage, SOME possible conversational moves
would be excluded as conversationally unsuitable. We might then
formulate a rough general principle which participants will be expected
(ceteris paribus) to observe, namely: Make your conversational
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. One might label this the COOPEHATIVE
PIUNCIPLE.
On the assumption that some such general principle as this is
acceptable, one may perhaps distinguish four categories under one
or another of which will fall certain more specific maxims and submaxims,
the following of which will, in general, yield results in accordance
with the Cooperative Principle. Echoing Kant, I call these
categories Quantity, Quillity, Relation, and Manner. The category of
QUANTITY relates to the quantity of information to be provided, and
under it fall the following maxims:
1. Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the
current purposes of the exchange).
2. Do not make your contribution more informative than is
required.
46 H. P. Grice
(The second maxim is disputable; it might be said that to be overinfoimative
is not a transgression of the CP but merely a waste of time.
However, it might be answered that such overinformativeness may
be confusing in that it is liable to raise side issues; and there may
also be an indirect effect, in that the hearers may be misled as a
result of thinking that there is some particular POINT in the provision
of the excess of information. However this may be, there is perhaps a
different reason for doubt about the admission of this second maxim,
namely, that its effect will be secured by a later maxim, which concems
relevance.)
Under the category of QUALITY falls a supennaxim- 'Try to make
your contribution one that is true' -and two more specific maxims:
1. Do not say what you believe to be false.
2. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
Under the category of RELATION I place a single maxim, namely,
'Be relevant.' Though the maxim itself is terse, its formulation conceals
a number of problems that exercise me a good deal: questions
about what different kinds and focuses of relevance there may be,
how these shift in the course of a talk exchange, how to allow for the
fact that subjects of conversation are legitimately changed, and so on.
I find the treatment of such questions exceedingly difficult, and I
hope to revert to them in a later work.
Finally, under the category of MANNER, which I understand as
relating not (like the previous categories) to what is said but, rather,
to HOW what is said is to be said, I include the supermaxim- 'Be
perspicuous' -and various maxims such as:
1. Avoid obscurity of expression.
2. Avoid ambiguity.
3. Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).
4. Be orderly.
And one might need others.
It is obvious that the observance of some of these maxims is a
matter of less urgency than is the observance of others; a man who
has expressed himself with undue prolixity would, in general, be
open to milder comment than would a man who has said something
he believes to be false. Indeed, it might be felt that the importance
of at least the first maxim of Quality is such that it should not be
included in a scheme of the kind I am constructing; other maxims
come into operation only on the assumption that this maxim of Quality
is satisfied. While this may be correct, so far as the generation of
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Logic and Conversation 47
implicatures is concerned it seems to play a role not totally different
from the other maxims, and it will be convenient, for the present at
least, to treat it as a member of the list of maxims.
There are, of course, all sorts of other maxims (aesthetic, social, or
moral in character), such as 'Be polite', that are also nom1ally observed
by participants in talk exchanges, and these may also generate
nonconventional implicatures. The conversational maxims, however,
and the conversational implicatures connected with them, are specially
connected (I hope) with the particular purposes that talk (and
so, talk exchange) is adapted lo serve and is prilllarily employed to
serve. I have stated my maxims as if this purpose were a maximally
effective exchange of information; this specification is, of course, too
narrow, and the scheme needs to be generalized to allow for such
general purposes as influencing or directing the actions of others.
As one of my avowed aims is to see talking as a special case or variety
of purposive, indeed rational, behavior, it may be worth noting
that the specific expectations or presumptions connected with at
least some of the foregoing maxims have their analogues in the
sphere of transactions that are not talk exchanges. I list briefly one
such analog for each conversational category.
1. Quantity. If you are assisting me to mend a car, I expect your
contribution to be neither more nor less than is required; if, for example,
at a particular stage I need four screws, I expect you to hand
me four, rather than two or six.
2. Quality. I expect your contributions to be genuine and not
spurious. If I need sugar as an ingredient in the cake you are assisting
me to make, I do not expect you to hand me salt; if I need a
spoon, I do not expect a trick spoon made of rubber.
3. Relation. I expect a partner's contribution to be appropriate to
immediate needs at each stage of the transaction; if I am mixing
ingredients for a cake, I do not expect to be handed a good book, or
even an oven cloth (though this might be an appropriate contribution
at a later stage).
4. Manner. I expect a partner to make it clear what contribution
he is making, and to execute his performance with reasonable dis-
patch.
These analogies are relevant to what I regard as a fundamental
question about the CP and its attendant maxims, namely, what the
basis is for the assumption which we seem to make, and on which (I
hope) it will appear that a great range of implicatures depend, that
talkers will in general (ceteris paribus and in the absence of indica-
..
48 H. P. Grice
tions to the contrary) proceed in the manner that these principles
prescribe. A dull but, no doubt at a certain level, adequate answer is
that it is just a well-recognized empirical fact that people DO behave
in these ways; they have learned to do so in childhood and not lost
the habit of doing so; and, indeed, it would involve a good deal of effort
to make a radical departure from the habit. It is much easier, for
example, to tell the truth than to invent lies.
I am, however, enough of a rationalist to want to find a basis that
underlies these facts, undeniable though they may be; I would like
to be able to think of the standard type of conversational practice not
merely as something that all or most do IN FACT follow but as something
that it is HEASONAllLE for us to follow, that we SHOULD NOT
abandon. For a time, I was attracted by the idea that observance of
the CP and the maxims, in a talk exchange, could be thought of as a
quasi-contractual matter, with parallels outside the realm of discourse.
If you pass by when I am struggling with my stranded car, I
no doubt have some degree of expectation that you will offer help,
but once you join me in tinkering under the hood, my expectations
become stronger and take more specific forms (in the absence of indications
that you are merely an incompetent meddler); and talk
exchanges seemed to me to exhibit, characteristically, certain features
that jointly distinguish cooperative transactions:
1. The participants have some common immediate aim, like getting
a car mended; their ultimate aims may, of course, be independent
and even in conflict-each may want to get the car mended in
order to drive off, leaving the other stranded. In characteristic talk
exchanges, there is a common aim even if, as in an over-the-wall
chat, it is a second-order one, namely, that each party should, for the
time being, identify himself with the transitory conversational interests
of the other.
2. The contributions of the participants .should be dovetailed,
mutually dependent.
3. There is some sort of understanding (which may be explicit but
which is often tacit) that, otl1er things being equal, the transaction
should continue in appropriate style unless both parties are agreeable
that it should terminate. You do not just shove off or start doing
something else.
But while some such quasi-contractual basis as this may apply to
some cases, there are too many types of exchange, like quarreling
and letter writing, that it fails to fit comfortably. In any case, one
feels that the talker who is irrelevant or obscure has primarily let
Logic and Conversation 49
down not his audience but himself. So I would like t< be able to
show that observance of the CP and maxims is reasonal de (rational)
along the following lines: that any one who cares about the goals that
are central to conversation/communication (e.g., giving and receiving
information, influencing and being influenced by others) must be expected
to have an interest, given suitable circumstances, in participation
in talk exchanges that will be profitable only on the assumption
that they are conducted in general accordance with the CP and the
maxims. Whether any such conclusion can be reached, I am uncertain;
in any case, I am fairly sure that I cannot reach it until I am a
good deal clearer about the nature of relevance and of the circumstances
in which it is required.
It is now time to show the connection between the CP and
maxims, on the one hand, and conversational implicature on the
other.
A participant in a talk exchange may fail to fulfill a maxim in
various ways, which include the following:
1. He may quietly and unostentatiously VIOLATE a ma;.,im; if so, in
some cases he will be liable to mislead.
2. He may OPT OUT from the operation both of the maxim and of
the CP; he may say, indicate, or allow it to become plai 1 that he is
unwilling to cooperate in the way the maxim requires. I le may say,
for example, I cannot say more; my lips are sealed.
3. He may be faced by a CLASH: He may be unable, for example,
to fulfill the first maxim of Quantity (Be as informative as is required)
without violating the second maxim of Quality (Have aclequate evidence
for what you say).
4. He may FLOUT a maxim; that is, he may BLATANTL. fail to fulfill
it. On the assumption that the speaker is able to fulfill the maxim
and to do so without violating another maxim (because oi a clash), is
not opting out, and is not, in view of the blatancy of his pt~rformance,
trying to mislead, the hearer is faced with a minor problem: How can
his saying what he did say be reconciled with the supposition that he
is observing the overall CP? This situation is one that characteristically
gives rise to a conversational implicature; and when a conversational
implicature is generated in this way, I shall say that a
maxim is being EXPLOITED.
I am now in a position to characterize the notion of conversational
implicature. 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
implicated that q, PROVIDED THAT (1) he is to be presumed to be ob-
50 H. P. Grice
serving 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 say p (or doing
so in THOSE terms) 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 sup:_)osition mentioned in (2) IS required.
Apply this to my initial example, to B's remark that C has not yet
been to prison. In a suitable setting A might reason as follows: '(1) B
has apparently violated the maxim 'Be relevant' and so may he
regarded as having flouted one of the maxims conjoining perspicuity,
yet I have no reason to suppose that he is opting out from the operation
of the CP; (2) given the circumstances, I can regard his irrelevance
as only apparent if, and only if, I suppose him to think that C
is potentially dishonest; (3) B knows that I am capable of working out
step (2). So B implicates that C is potentially dishonest.'
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. To work out that a particular
conversational implicature is present, the hearer will reply on the
following data: (1) the conventional meaning of the words used,
together with the identity of any references that may be involved; (2)
the CP and its maxims; (3) the context, linguistic or otherwise, of the
utterance; (4) other items of background knowledge; and (5) the fact
(or supposed fact) that all relevant items falling under the previous
headings are available to both participants and both participants
know or assume this to be the case. A general pattern for the working
out of a conversational implicature might be given as follows: 'He has
said that p; there is no reason to suppose. that he is not observing the
maxims, or at least the CP; he could not be doing this unless he
thought that q; he knows (and knows that I know that he knows) that
I can see that the supposition that he thinks that q IS required; he has
done nothing to stop me thinking that q; he intends me to think, or is
at least willing to allow me to think, that q; and so he has implicated
that q.'
Examples
I shall now offer a number of examples, which I shall divide into
three groups.
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Logic and Conversation 51
Gnoup A: Examples in which no maxim is violated. or at least in
which it is not clear that any maxim is violated
A is standing by an obviously immobilized car and is approached
by B; the following exchange takes place:
(1) A: I am out of petrol.
B: There is a garage round the corner. (Gloss: B would be
infringing the maxim 'Be relevant' unless he thinks, or thinks it possible,
that the garage is open, and has petrol to sell; so he implicates
that the garage is, or at least may he open, etc.)
In this example, unlike the case of the remark He hasn't been to
prison yet, the unstated connection between B's remark and A's
remark is so obvious that, even if one interprets the supermaxim of
Manner, 'Be perspicuous,' as applying not only to the expression of
what is said but also to the connection of what is said with adjacent
remarks, there seems to be no case for regarding that supermaxim as
infringed in this example. The next example is perhaps a little less
clear in this respect:
(2) A:
B:
Smith doesn't seem to have a girlfriend these days.
He has been paying a lot of visits to New York lately.
B implicates that Smith has, or may have, a girlfriend in New York.
(A gloss is unnecessary in view of that given for the previous
example.)
In both examples, the speaker implicates that which he must be assumed
to believe in order to preserve the assumption that he is observing
the maxim of relation.
GnouP B: An example in which a maxim is violated, hut its
violation is to be explained by the supposition of a clash with
another maxim
A is planning with B an itinerary for a holiday in France. Both
know that A wants to see his friend C, if to do so would not involve
too great a prolongation of his journey:
(3) A: Where does C live?
B: Somewhere in the South of France. (Gloss: There is no
reason to suppose that B is opting out; his answer is, as he well
knows, less informative than is required to meet A's needs. This
infringement of the first maxim of Quantity can be explained only by
the supposition that B is aware that to be more informative would be
to say something that infringed the maxim of Quality, 'Don't say
52 H. P. Grice
what you lack adequate evidence for', so B implicates that he does
not know in which town C lives.)
GROUP C: Examples that involve exploitation, that is, a procedure
by which a maxim is flouted for the purpose ofgetting in a conversational
implicature by means ofsomething of the nature ofa figure
of speech
In these examples, though some maxim is violated at the level of
what is said, the hearer is entitled to assume that that maxim, or at
least the overall Cooperative Principle, is observed at the level of
what is implicated.
(Ia) A flouting of the first maxim of Quantity
A is writing a testimonial about a pupil who is a candidate for a
philosophy job, and his letter reads as follows: 'Dear Sir, Mr. X's
command of English is excellent, and his attendance at tutorials has
been regular. Yours, etc.' (Gloss: A cannot be opting out, since if he
wished to be uncooperative, why write at all? He cannot be unable,
through ignorance, to say more, since the man is his pupil; moreover,
he knows that more information than this is wanted. He must, therefore,
be wishing to impart information that he is reluctant to write
down. This supposition is tenable only on the assumption that he
thinks Mr. X is no good at philosophy. This, then, is what he is
implicating.)
Extreme examples of a flouting of the first maxim of Quantity are
provided by utterances of patent tautologies like Women are women
and War is war. I would wish to maintain that at the level of what is
said, in my favored sense, such remarks are totally noninformative
and so, at that level, cannot but infringe the first maxim of Quantity
in any conversational context. They are, of course, informative at the
level of what is implicated, and the hearer's identification of their informative
content at this level is dependent on his ability to explain
the speaker's selection of this PARTICULAH patent tautology.
(3b) An infringement of the second maxim of Quantity, 'Do not
give more information than is required', on the assumption that the
existence of such a maxim should be admitted
A wants to know whether p, and B volunteers not only the information
that p, but information to the effect that it is certain that p, and
that the evidence for its being the case that p is so-and-so and such-
and-such.
B's volubility may be undesigned, and if it is so regarded by A it
may raise in A's mind a doubt as to whether B is as certain as he says
'
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Logic and Conversation 53
he is ('Methinks the lady doth protest too much'). But if it is thought
of as designed, it would be an oblique way of conveying that it is to
some degree controversial whether or not p. It is, however, arguable
that such an implicature could be explained by reference to the
maxim of Relation without invoking an alleged second maxim of
Quantity.
(2a) Examples in which the first maxim of Quality is flouted
I. Irony. X, with whom A has been on close terms until now, has
betrayed a secret of A's to a business rival. A and his audience iJOth
know this. A says 'X is a fine friend'. (Gloss: It is perfec:tl; obvious to
A and his audience that what A has said or has made as if to say is
something he does not believe, and the audience knows that A
knows that this is obvious to the audience. So, unless A's utterance is
entirely pointless, A must be trying to get across some other proposition
than the one he purports to be putting forward. This must be
some obviously related proposition; the most obviously related proposition
is the contradictory of the one he purports to be putting
forward.)
2. Metaphor. Examples like You are the cream in my coffee characteristically
involve categorial falsity, so the contradictory of what
the speaker has made as it to say will, strictly speaking, be a truism;
so it cannot be THAT that such a speaker is trying to get across. The
most likely supposition is that the speaker is attributing to his audience
some feature or features in respect of which the audience
resembles (more or less fancifully) the mentioned substance.
It is possible to combine metaphor and irony by imp >sing on the
hearer two stages of interpretation. I say You are the r·ream in my
coffee, intending the hearer to reach first the metaphor intcrpretant
'You are my pride and joy' and then the irony interprclant 'You are
my bane.'
3. Meiosis. Of a man known to have broken up all the furniture,
one says He was a little intoxicated.
4. Hyperbole. Every nice girl loves a sailor.
(2b) Examples in which the second maxim of Quality 'Do not say
that for which you lack adequate evidence', is flouted are perhaps
not easy to find, but the following seems to be a specimen. I say of
X's wife, She is probably deceiving him this evening. ln a suitable
context, or with a suitable gesture or tone of voice, it may be clear
that I have no adequate reason for supposing this to be the case. My
partner, to preserve the assumption that the conversational game is
still being played, assumes that I am getting at some related proposition
for the acceptance of which I DO have a reasonable basis. The
54 H. P. Grice
related proposition might well be that she is given to deceiving her
husband, or possibly that she is the sort of person who would not
stop short of such conduct.
(3) Examples in which an implicature is achieved by real, as distinct
from apparent, violation of the maxim of Relation are perhaps
rare, but the following seems to be a good candidate. At a genteel tea
party, A says Mrs. X is an old bag. There is a moment of appalled
silence, and then B says The weather has been quite delightful this
summer, hasn't it? B has blatantly refused to make what HE says relevant
to A's preceding remark. He thereby implicates that A's remark
should not be discussed and, perhaps more specifically, that A has
committed a social gaffe.
(4) Examples in which various maxims falling under the supermaxim
'Be perspicuous' are flouted
1. Ambiguity. We must remember that we are concerned only
with ambiguity that is deliberate, and that the speaker intends or expects
to be recognized by his hearer. The problem the hearer has to
solve is why a speaker should, when still playing the conversational
game, go out of his way to choose an ambiguous utterance. There are
two types of cases:
(a) Examples in which there is no difference, or no striking difference,
between two interpretations of an utterance with respect to
straightforwardness; neither interpretation is notably more sophisticated,
less standard, more recondite or more far-fetched than the
other. We might consider Blake's lines: 'Never seek to tell thy love,
Love that never told can be.' To avoid the complications introduced
by the presence of the imperative mood, I shall consider the related
sentence, I sought to tell my love, love that never told can be. There
may be a double ambiguity here. My love may refer to either a state
of emotion or an object of emotion, and love that never told can be
may mean either 'Love that cannot be told' or 'love that if told cannot
continue to exist.' Partly because of the sophistication of the poet and
partly because of internal evidence (that the ambiguity is kept up),
there seems to be no alternative to supposing that the ambiguities
are deliberate and that the poet is conveying both what he would be
saying if one interpretation were intended rather than the other, and
vice versa; though no doubt the poet is not explicitly SAYING any one
of these things but only conveying or suggesting them (cf. 'Since she
[nature] pricked thee out of women's pleasure, mine be thy love,
and thy love's use their treasure.)
(b) Examples in which one interpretation is notably less straightforward
than another. Take the complex example of the British Gen-
I
Logic and Conversation 55
eral who captured the town of Sind and sent back the message
Peccavi. The ambiguity involved ('I have Sind'/'I have sinned') is
phonemic, not morphemic; and the expression actually used is
unambiguous, but since it is in a language foreign to speaker and
hearer, translation is called for, and the ambiguity resides in the
standard translation into native English.
Whether or not the straightforward interpretant ('I have sinned') is
being conveyed, it seems that the nonslraightforward must be. There
might be stylistic reasons for conveying by a sentence merely its
nonstraightforward interprctant, but it would be pointless, and
perhaps also stylistically objectionable, to go to the trouble of finding
an expression that nonstraightforwardly conveys that p, thus imposing
on an audience the effort involved in finding this interpretant, if
this interpretant were otiose so far as communication was concerned.
Whether the straightforward interpretant is also being conveyed
seems to depend on whether such a supposition would conflict with
other conversational requirements, for example, would it be relevant,
would it be something the speaker could be supposed to accept, and
so on. If such requirements are not satisfied, then the straightforward
interpretant is not being conveyed. If they are, it is. If the author of
Peccavi could naturally be supposed to think that he had committed
some kind of transgression, for example, had disobeyed his orders in
capturing Sind, and if reference to such a transgression would be relevant
to the presumed interests of the audience, then he would have
been conveying both interpretants; otl1erwise he would be conveying
only the nonstraightforward one.
2. Obscurity. How do I exploit, for the purposes of communication,
a deliberate and overt violation of the requirement that I
should avoid obscurity? Obviously, if the Cooperative Principle is to
operate, I must intend my partner to understand what I am saying
despite the obscurity I import into my utterance. Suppose that A and
B are having a conversation in the presence of a third party, for example,
a child, tl1en A might be deliberately obscure, though not too
obscure, in the hope that B would understand and the third party
not. Furthermore, if A expects B to see that A is being deliberately
obscure, it seems reasonable to suppose that, in making his conversational
contribution in this way, A is implicating that the contents of
his communication should not be imparted to the third party.
3. Failure to be brief or succinct. Compare the remarks:
(a) Miss X sang 'Home sweet home.'
(b) Miss X produced a series of sounds tlzat corresponded
closely with the score of 'Home sweet home'.
56 H. P. Grice
Suppose that a reviewer has chosen to utter (b) rather than (a).
(Gloss: Why has he selected that rigmarole in place of the concise
1
and n~:lrlY synonymous sang? Presumably, to indicate some striking
difference between Miss X's performance and those to which the
word singing is usually applied. The most obvious supposition is that
Miss X's performance suffered from some hideous defect. The
reviewer knows that this supposition is what is likely to spring to
mind, so that is what he is implicating.)
I have so far considered only cases of what I might call particularized
conversational implicature-that is to say, cases in which an
implicature is carried by saying that p on a particular occasion in
virtue of special features of the context, cases in which there is no
room for the idea that an implicature of this sort is NORMALLy carried
by saying that p. But there are cases of generalized conversational
implicature. Sometimes one can say that the use of a certain form of
words in an utterance would normally (in the ABSENCE of special circumstances)
carry such-and-such an implicature or type of implicature.
Noncontroversial examples are perhaps hard to find, since it is
all too easy to treat a generalized conversational implicature as if it
were a conventional implicature. I offer an example that I hope may
be fairly noncontroversial.
Anyone who uses a sentence of the form X is meeting a woman
this evening would normally implicate that the person to be met was
someone other than X's wife, mother, sister, or perhaps even close
platonic friend. Similarly, if I were to say X went into a house yesterday
and found a tortoise inside the front door, my hearer would normally
be surprised if some time later I revealed that the house was
X's own. I could produce similar linguistic phenomena involving the
expressions a garden, a car, a college, and so on. Sometimes, however,
there would normally be no such implicature ('I have been sitting
in a car all morning'), and sometimes a reverse implicature ('I
broke a finger yesterday'). I am inclined to think that one would not
lend a sympathetic ear to a philosopher who suggested that there are
three senses of the form of expression an X: one in which it means
roughly 'something that satisfies the conditions defining the word X,'
another in which it means approximately 'an X (in the first sense)
that is only remotely related in a certain way to some person indicated
by the context,' and yet another in which it means 'an X (in
the first sense) that is closely related in a certain way to some person
indicated by the context.' Would we not much prefer an account on
the following lines (which, of course, may be incorrect in detail):
I
I;..
'
Logic and Conversation 57
When someone, by using the form of expression an X, implicates that
the X does not belong to or is not otherwise closely connected with
some identifiable person, the implicature is present l>ecause the
speaker has failed to be specific in a way in which he might have
been expected to be specific, with the consequence that it is likely to
be assumed that he is not in a position to be specific. This is a familiar
implicature situation and is classifiable as a failure, for one reason
or another, to fulfill the first maxim of Quantity. The only difficult
question is why it should, in certain cases, be presumed, independently
of information about particular contexts of utterance, that
specification of the closeness or remoteness of the connection
between a particular person or object and a further person who is
mentioned or indicated by the utterance should be likely to be of
interest. The answer must lie in the following region: Transactions
between a person and other persons or things closely connected witl1
him are liable to be very different as regards their concomitants and
results from the same sort of transactions involving only remotely
connected persons or things; the concomitants and results, for instance,
of my finding a hole in MY roof are likely to be very different
from the concomitants and results of my finding a hole in someone
else's roof. Information, like money, is often given without the
giver's knowing to just what use the recipient will want to put it. If
someone to whom a transaction is mentioned gives it further consideration,
he is likely to find himself wanting the answers to further
questions that the speaker may not be able to identify in advance; if
the appropriate specification will be likely to enable the hearer to
answer a considerable variety of such questions for himself, then
there is a presumption that the speaker should include it in his
remark; if not, then there is no such presumption.
Finally, we can now show that, conversational implicature being
what it is, it must possess certain features:
1. Since, to assume the presence of a conversational implicature,
we have to assume that at least the Cooperative Principle is being
observed, and since it is possible to opt out of the observation of this
principle, it follows that a generalized conversational implicature can
be canceled in a particular case. It may be explicitly canceled, by the
addition of a clause that states or implies that the speaker has opted
out, or it may be contextually canceled, if the form of utterance that
usually carries it is used in a context that makes it clear that the
speaker IS opting out.
2. Insofar as tl1e calculation that a particular conversational implicature
is present requires, besides contextual and background infor-
..
58 H. P. Grice
mation, only a knowledge of what has been said (or of the conventional
commitment of the utterance), and insofar as the manner of
expression plays no role in the calculation, it will not be possible to
find another way of saying the same thing, which simply lacks the
implicature in question, except where some special feature of the
substituted version is itself relevant to the determination of an implicature
(in virtue of one of the maxims of Manner). If we call this feature
NONDETACIIAlliLITY, one may expect a generalized conversational
implicature that is carried by a familiar, nonspecial locution to
have a high degree of nondetachability.
3. To speak approximately, since the calculation of the presence of
a conversational implicature presupposes an initial knowledge of the
conventional force of the expression the utterance of which carries
the implicature, a conversational implicatum will be a condition that
is not included in the original specification of the expression's conventional
force. Though it may not be impossible for what starts life,
so to speak, as a conversational implicature to become conven'
tionalized, to suppose that this is so in a given case would require
special justification. So, initially at least, conversational implicata are
not part of the meaning of the expressions to the employment of
which they attach.
4. ·Since the. truth of a conversational implicatum is not required
by the truth of what is said (what is said may be true-what is
implicated may be false), the implicature is not carried by what is
said, but only by the saying of what is said, or by 'putting it that way.'
5. Since, to calculate a conversational implicature is to calculate
what has to be supposed in order to preserve the supposition that the
Cooperative Principle is being observed, and since there may be
various possible specific explanations, a list of which may be open,
the conversational implicatum in such cases will be disjunction of
such specific explanations; and if the list of these is open, the implicatum
will have just the kind of indeterminacy that many actual
implicata do in fact seem to possess.
I
I!
.j
INDIRECT SPEECH ACTS*
jOHN R. SEARLE
University of California, Berkeley
INTRODUCTION
The simplest cases of meaning are those in which the speaker
utters a sentence and means exactly and literally what he says. In
such cases the speaker intends to produce a certain illocutionary effect
in the hearer, and he intends to produce this effect by getting the
hearer to recognize his intention to produce it, and he intends to get
the hearer to recognize this intention in virtue of the hearer's ,mowledge
of the rules that govern the utterance of the sentence. But
notoriously, not all cases of meaning are this simple: In hints, insinuations,
irony, and metaphor-to mention a few examples-the
speaker's utterance meaning and the sentence meaning come
apart in various ways. One important class of such cases is that in
which the speaker utters a sentence, means what he says, but also
means something more. For example, a speaker may utter the sentence
I want you to do it by way of requesting the hearer to do
something. The utterance is incidentally meant as a statement, but
it is also meant primarily as a request, a request made by way of making
a statement. In such cases a sentence that contains the illocutionary
force indicators for one kind of illocutionary act can be
uttered to perform, IN ADDITION, another type of illocutionary act.
There are also cases in which the speaker may utter a sentence and
mean what he says and also mean another illocution with a different
0
© John R. Searle
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