LANGUAGE PHILOSOPHY: SENSE, INTENTION, AND SPEECH ACT

1. LANGUAGE PHILOSOPHY
CHAPTER 7
SENSE, INTENTION, AND
SPEECH ACT: Grices’s
Programme

2. INTRODUCTION
Sense…..
the semantic value of an expression as
that feature of it which determines
whether sentences in which it appears
are true or false.
Intention…
Intention is central to our understanding of
ourselves as rational agents.
Speech act…
Language is not only used to inform or to
describe things, it is often used to do
things to perform acts.

3. Homeric struggles: Two
approaches to sense
Sentence-meaning
concerns the strict and
literal meaning of a given
sentence type.
is true if and onlyif
Speaker’s-meaning is,
roughly, a matter of the
information someone uttering
a particular token of an
expression intends to convey
by means of the utterance of
that expression.
intendto communicate

4. Grice on speaker’s-meaning and
sentence-meaning
The first of these is the natural sense,
exemplified by:
(1) “Those spots mean measles.”
(2) “Those spots didn’t mean anything to me,
but to the doctor they meant measles.”
This type of meaning is sometimes referred
to as indicator meaning, since the idea is that
spots indicate the presence of
measles and so on.

5. Next…….
Grice points out that one feature of natural
meaning is that if x means that p (where x is an
object or objects, p a proposition) in the sense
of natural meaning, it follows that p.
This sense of meaning contrasts with non
natural meaning, exemplified by:
(1) “Those three rings of the bell (of the bus)
mean that the bus is full.”
(2) “That remark, ‘Smith couldn’t get on without
his trouble and

6. Next…….
there is no entailment from x means that p to
p:
it makes perfect sense to say that “Those
three rings of the bell mean that the bus is
full, but the conductor is mistaken and it isn’t
actually full”

7. Searle’s modifications : Illocutionary and perlocutionary
intentions
Perlocutionary
Intention
Illocutionary
Intention
the effect of the utterance
on the hearer, depending
on specific circumstances.
the extra meaning of the
utterance produced on the
basis of its literal meaning
Jones is given a report, Jones
is given a warning, Jones is
given a promise, Jones is
given a proposal, Jones is
given an order, Jones is
Jones forms a certain
belief, Jones is amused,
Jones is impressed,
Jones is embarrassed
INTENTION

8. ◦ Examples….
SPEECH ACT
perlocutionary act:
the effect of the
utterance on the
hearer, depending on
specific
circumstances
illocutionary act:
the extra meaning of
the utterance
produced on the
basis of its literal
meaning
Locutionary
act: the act of
saying, the
literal meaning
of the utterance
can be the
hearer’s
opening the
window or his
refusal to do so
can be a
request of the
hearer to open
the window.
the saying of it
with its literal
meaning “There
isn’t enough
fresh air in here”.

9. Objections to Gricean
analyses