Grice's Theory of Meaning: Natural vs. Non-Natural Signs

Grice's Meaning: Communicative Intention and Occasional Speaker Meaning

Grice notes that meaning is attributed to two very different types of signs: some signs are natural and others are non-natural. The former have a causal relationship, meaning they are not arbitrary in what they signify. Natural meaning relations are involved because they depend on the natural intentions of anyone, and the connection between sign and meaning is established regardless of human decisions and regulations.

Non-Natural Signs and Communicative Intentions

On the other hand, there are non-natural signs, which are the focus of the analysis of meaning that Grice proposes. The distinctive characteristic that makes actions of sign language or non-natural emissions significant is that they are made with specific intentions of a certain type. These intentions are called communicative intentions.

The Grice Procedure for Non-Natural Meaning

Thus, according to Grice, to give a non-natural sign is to perform an action guided by a communicative intention—that is, to perform an action that aims to produce a specific response in other subjects using a specific type of procedure, known as the Grice procedure. The emitter of the sign is the speaker, and the subject or subjects from whom the speaker expects an answer constitute the audience. This procedure requires that the audience recognizes the speaker's intent to produce the desired response.

Defining Occasional Speaker Meaning

Grice calls the meaning conveyed by the speaker through the emission of a non-natural sign occasional speaker meaning. For this occasional speaker meaning to occur, the speaker must utter the non-natural sign to the audience with a triple purpose:

• The intention of producing a determined response in the audience.
• The intention that the audience recognizes that the speaker intends to produce a given response.
• The idea that this recognition is a major reason for the audience to produce the expected response given by the speaker.

Summary of Implications for Rationality

In short, the emission of a non-natural sign is guided by the communicative intention of producing a specific response in other subjects through the recognition by those subjects of the emitter's intention to produce it. The speaker intends this recognition to serve as a major reason for the expected response. The essential character of this relationship implies that, insofar as the audience is rational, they will not provide the answer in the absence of this reason.

The type of response depends on the type of sign uttered by the speaker. In this way, therefore, not all cases of significance are cases of natural meaning, nor vice versa; Grice's occasional speaker meaning is fundamentally distinct from natural meaning.