How does Grice distinguish between the semantic and pragmatic contributions
to what speakers convey by their utterances?
How plausible is this distinction?
Grice outlines a hierarchy in the meaning of what speakers convey by their utterances. The first level is one of conventional meanings associated with the words employed. If I say “the ball is red”, then the conventional meanings associated with the words I utter constitutes the semantic contribution to what I wish to convey by that utterance. The second level is one of conventional implicature — the implications conventionally associated with the words employed. If I say “the ball is round but soft”, there is a convention associated with the word “but” implying a notable contrast. (There are, naturally, a lot of words that carry with them some conventionally associated implication in addition to the dictionary/conventional meaning of the word.) This level of conventional implicature is also, according to Grice, part of the semantic contribution of what I convey by my utterance. I choose words with which to convey what I wish to convey based on my own knowledge of the conventional meanings and conventional implicature of those words. Where my own knowledge of the conventions involved is faulty, I will tend to choose the wrong (or at least not the best) words.
The third level of Grice’s hierarchy is one of first-degree conversational implicature — the meaning of my words within the context of utterance. If I reply to your question of whether I am going to the party tonight with “I have to work”, then by using the Principle of Cooperation, you can infer that I am conveying to you that I am not going to the party (among other things). The fourth level is one of second-degree conversational implicature — the meaning of my words within context tout court. If my response to your question about the party tonight was “I like parties!”, then you will have to use information about my past attendance at parties (am I a party animal or not), and my tone of voice or other attitudinal cues (sardonic or sincere) to determine whether I am conveying to you that I will or will not attend the party.
To Grice, the two levels not requiring context to establish the meaning of an utterance constitute the realm of semantics. Grice relegates the two levels requiring context to establish meaning to the realm of pragmatics. Semantics is traditionally understood as the study of meaning by focusing on the relation between signifiers, like words, etc. and what they stand for. Pragmatics, on the other hand, is traditionally understood as the study of the ways in which context contributes to meaning. So by separating out the role of context as distinguishing between semantics and pragmatics, Grice is adhering to the traditional split between the two.
Although, as Kent Bach has pointed out, there is some debate about whether Grice is merely adhering to an established tradition, or was actually instrumental in establishing that tradition. Grice’s context-dependence distinction between semantic and pragmatic follows the widely used distinction between conventional meaning versus meaning in use. The only other kind of semantic-pragmatic distinction evident in the literature is that between truth-conditional versus non truth-conditional meaning. Since Grice’s program is not about truth-conditional meaning, that alternative is irrelevant.
The only other threat to the plausibility of the distinction Grice draws between the semantic and pragmatic contributions to what speakers convey by their utterances, is the question of whether there really is a conventional meaning to the words being employed.
Now although I have argued elsewhere that, following Davidson, there is no such thing as “a language” in any philosophically interesting sense (only in a sociologically delineated sense), for any occasion of communication, there must necessarily be an utterer and an intended audience. If communication between the two is to be even marginally successful, there must exist a reasonably commonality in the meanings associated with the words (symbols, signs) being employed. This is the essence of the sense of “convention” analyzed by Lewis. Even if the only population involved in the convention is the two people of the speaker and his intended audience. So if a speaker is going to be even approximately successful in conveying anything to the intended audience, there will have to some conventional meaning associated with the words being employed. And the same argument can be applied, mutatis mutandis, to the real existence of conventional implicature.
So Grice distinguishes between the semantic and the pragmatic contributions to what speakers convey by their utterance, on the basis of the necessity of employing context to determine the meaning intended. Utterances examined without context constitute the semantic contribution. And semantics, as intended, naturally precedes pragmatics. Utterances examined within context constitute the pragmatic contribution. This distinction is in line with the traditional distinctions drawn by numerous philosophers of various schools, between semantic and pragmatic, and so is eminently plausible.