Speaker meaning

The meaning of the speaker is what a speaker means with an utterance or action, that is, what he wants to convey with his utterance or action.

H. Paul Grice introduced the term , but it has been the subject of extensive debate in intentionalist action theory and semantics.

What it means to mean something with an utterance, Grice determined in a series of explanations, whereby he wants to achieve a step-by-step approach to a correct analysis with the individual explanations. Further clarifications were then made within the controversy surrounding his theory.

The starting point is a provision that Meggle called Grice's basic model .

Grice writes:

"'S meant something by x' is (roughly) equivalent to 'S intended the utterance of x to produce some effect in an audience by means of the recognition of this intention'"

and specified a few years later:

"'S meant something by uttering x' is true iff, for some audience H, S utered x intending

(1) H to produce a particular response r

(2) H to think (recognize) that S intends (1)

(3) H to fulfill (1) on the basis of his fulfillment of (2) "

The determination of Grice's basic model has undergone numerous refinements (partly by Grice himself). The meaning depends on and only on the speaker's intentions, so it is speaker-centered. Listeners only play a minor role. It has been criticized that the meaning of the speaker does not guarantee communication, but only when the meaning that the listener assigns to the speaker's utterance or action roughly corresponds to the meaning of the speaker, communication has taken place.

See also

• Paul Grice
• Philosophy of language
• Meaning (philosophy of language)

literature

• Andreas Kemmerling : Utterer's meaning revisited (PDF; 1.2 MB) . (engl.)
• Georg Meggle: Basic concepts of communication . 2nd edition Verlag de Gruyter, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-11-015258-4 .
• Georg Meggle (ed.): Action, communication, meaning . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / M. 1993, ISBN 3-518-28683-8 . From this the essays

1. H. Paul Grice: Intendieren, Meinen, Signen , pp. 2-15.
2. H. Paul Grice: Speaker. Importance and intentions , pp. 16–51.
3. Max Black: Meaning and Intention , pp. 52–81.
4. H. Paul Grice: Intendieren, Meinen, meaning , pp. 85–111.

• Patrick Suppes : The Primacy of utterer's meaning. . In: Richard E. Grandy, Richard Warner (Eds.): Philosophical Grounds of Rationality. Intentions, Categories, Ends . Clarendon Press, Oxford 1986, pp. 109-129, ISBN 0-19-824747-8 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Georg Meggle: Basic concepts of communication .
2. ↑ Georg Meggle: Basic Concepts of Communication , p. 17.
3. ^ H. Paul Grice: Meaning . In: The Philosophical Review , Vol. 66 (1957), pp. 377-388
4. ↑ H. Paul Grice: utterer's Meaning and intention . In: The Philosophical Review , Vol. 78 (1969) No. 2, pp. 147-177.
5. ^ Aloysius Martinich: Communication and reference (Foundations of communications). Verlag de Gruyter, Berlin 1984, p. 19, ISBN 3-11-010067-3 .
6. ↑ First published as: Meaning . In: The Philosophical Review , Vol. 66 (1957), pp. 377-388, ISSN  0031-8108 .
7. ↑ First published as: Utterer's Meaning and Intention . In: The Philosophical Review , Vol. 78 (1969) No. 2, pp. 147-177, ISSN  0031-8108 .
8. ↑ First published as: Meaning and Intention. An Examination of Grice's View . In: New Literary History , Vol. 4 (1972/73), pp. 257-279, ISSN  0028-6087 .
9. ↑ First published as: Utterer's Meaning. Sentence-Meaning, and Word-Meaning . In: Foundations of Language , 4 : 225-242 (1968), ISSN  0015-900X .