GRICE & RELEVANCE

Compare and Contrast Grice's and Relevance Theory's Treatment of Non Literal Language

Grice's and Relevance Theory's Treatment of Non Literal Language

Introduction

The English philosopher H. Paul Grice studied and taught at Oxford until 1967. From 1939 to 1967, he was a Fellow at St. John's College. From 1968 until his retirement in 1980, Grice was a Professor of Philosophy at Berkeley, California. Grice is known for his philosophy of language work, especially in providing a definite distinction between the usage of non-literal and literal language, the conversational implicature of the speaker and the intentional semantics.

Discussion

Grice's Theory

The main idea of Grice's theory has been presented in his lectures on William James at Harvard University in 1967. In his essay, 'Meaning' (1957) Grice distinguishes between natural meaning and non-natural meaning. This distinction applies to the realm of communication in general.

The natural meaning, which is often termed as factive or involuntary is termed as meaning that represent things the way they are. For e.g. A snowy weather would automatically imply that the weather is cold.

The non-natural meaning is the kind of meaning that involves a speaker. The definition of speaker has been refined to include not merely linguistic limitations but any form of contact of interaction that may fit into this category is justified.

Later on Grice gave a determination of non-natural meaning, which is also known as Gricesche's basic model. This basic model helps analyze the application of Grice's theory of conversation in terms of negative interactions.

Grice has influenced the philosophy of language to a large extent by his investigation on conversational implicatures. In this concept, a distinction between what a person says with his words and what a person actually means by his words has been keenly stressed upon.

Comparison of Relevance & Grice's Theory

Overview of Relevance Theory Relevance Theory which is essentially based on its two core principles and on the definition of relevance; may be viewed as an advanced attempt to emphasize on one of the claims made by Grice's theory. This claim pertains to the recognition and expression of a person's intentions in all forms of communication, either verbal or non-verbal. Grice set foundations for an inferential model that is widely accepted as an alternative for classical code model. The goal of this model is to explain how the speaker infers the speaker's meaning. The theoretic account for Relevance Theory however is based on Grice's claims that expectations are automatically generated by the hearer in response to the speaker's utterances. While a general harmony is viewed on the impact of utterances, the Relevance Theory questions several other views supported by Grice such as the need for maxims, the pragmatic processes and their relevance and the Cooperative Principle. The Relevance Theory states that these responses and expectations in relevance to utterances are adequately accurate, precise and predictable to guide the understanding of the hearer towards the speaker and his intentions.

Criteria for Natural and Non-Natural Meaning

For distinguishing the non-natural meaning and the natural meaning, Grice proposes five ...