H.P. Grice and the Great Pragmatics Predicament

Abstract

H. P. Grice is widely accredited with the discovery of implicature, that which is not literally said by a sentence but is nonetheless conveyed when used in a conversational context, creating a theory which has had a tremendous influence on the study of pragmatics. However, in this essay I shall be arguing that beyond the very intuitive notion that implicature exists, the system that Grice constructs to explain and predict it in Logic and Conversation1 is incomplete in several devastating ways, which eventually leads to the need for its extensive refinement and additional elements to form a complete whole. It is often commented that Grice’s system is too vague to commit him to anything, however, Grice does make several definite claims and it is my aim to show that these cannot properly or fully characterise how implicature work.