more explicit and systematic than the intuitive reconstructions supplied by un-sophisticated speakers, the analyses of implicature which have been proposed by pragmatists have shared with these intuitive reconstructions the defect of being almost entirely ex post facto. Given that an utterance in context was found to carry particular implicatures, what both the hearer and the pragmatic theorist can do, the latter in a slightly more sophisticated way, is to show how in very intuitive terms there was an argu-ment based on the context, the utterance and general expectations about the behaviour of speakers, that would justify the particular interpretation chosen. What they fail to show is that on the same basis, an equally convincing justification could not have been given for some other interpretation that was not in fact chosen. There may be a whole variety of interpretations that would meet whatever standards of truthfulness, informativeness, relevance and clarity have been proposed or envis-aged so far. The theory needs improving at a fundamental level before it can be fruitfully applied to particular cases. In his William James Lectures, Grice put forward an idea of fundamental import-ance: that the very act of communicating creates expectations which it then exploits. Grice himself first applied this idea and its elaboration in terms of the maxims to a rather limited problem of linguistic philosophy: do logical connectives (‘and’, ‘or’, ‘if . . . then’) have the same meaning in natural languages as they do in logic? He argued that the richer meaning these connectives seem to have in natural languages can be explained in terms not of word meaning but of implicature. He then suggested that this approach could have wider applications: that the task of linguistic semantics could be considerably simplified by treating a large array of problems in terms of implicatures. And indeed, the study of implicature along Gricean lines has become a major concern of pragmatics. We believe that the basic idea of Grice’s William James Lectures has even wider implications: it offers a way of developing the analysis of inferential communication, suggested by Grice him-self in ‘Meaning’ (1957), into an explanatory model. To achieve this, however, we must leave aside the various elaborations of Grice’s original hunches and the sophisticated, though empirically rather empty debates they have given rise to. What is needed is an attempt to rethink, in psychologically realistic terms, such basic questions as: What form of shared information is available to humans? How is shared information exploited in communication? What is relevance and how is it achieved? What role does the search for relevance play in communication? It is to these questions that we now turn.

DOI link for more explicit and systematic than the intuitive reconstructions supplied by un-sophisticated speakers, the analyses of implicature which have been proposed by pragmatists have shared with these intuitive reconstructions the defect of being almost entirely ex post facto. Given that an utterance in context was found to carry particular implicatures, what both the hearer and the pragmatic theorist can do, the latter in a slightly more sophisticated way, is to show how in very intuitive terms there was an argu-ment based on the context, the utterance and general expectations about the behaviour of speakers, that would justify the particular interpretation chosen. What they fail to show is that on the same basis, an equally convincing justification could not have been given for some other interpretation that was not in fact chosen. There may be a whole variety of interpretations that would meet whatever standards of truthfulness, informativeness, relevance and clarity have been proposed or envis-aged so far. The theory needs improving at a fundamental level before it can be fruitfully applied to particular cases. In his William James Lectures, Grice put forward an idea of fundamental import-ance: that the very act of communicating creates expectations which it then exploits. Grice himself first applied this idea and its elaboration in terms of the maxims to a rather limited problem of linguistic philosophy: do logical connectives (‘and’, ‘or’, ‘if . . . then’) have the same meaning in natural languages as they do in logic? He argued that the richer meaning these connectives seem to have in natural languages can be explained in terms not of word meaning but of implicature. He then suggested that this approach could have wider applications: that the task of linguistic semantics could be considerably simplified by treating a large array of problems in terms of implicatures. And indeed, the study of implicature along Gricean lines has become a major concern of pragmatics. We believe that the basic idea of Grice’s William James Lectures has even wider implications: it offers a way of developing the analysis of inferential communication, suggested by Grice him-self in ‘Meaning’ (1957), into an explanatory model. To achieve this, however, we must leave aside the various elaborations of Grice’s original hunches and the sophisticated, though empirically rather empty debates they have given rise to. What is needed is an attempt to rethink, in psychologically realistic terms, such basic questions as: What form of shared information is available to humans? How is shared information exploited in communication? What is relevance and how is it achieved? What role does the search for relevance play in communication? It is to these questions that we now turn.

more explicit and systematic than the intuitive reconstructions supplied by un-sophisticated speakers, the analyses of implicature which have been proposed by pragmatists have shared with these intuitive reconstructions the defect of being almost entirely ex post facto. Given that an utterance in context was found to carry particular implicatures, what both the hearer and the pragmatic theorist can do, the latter in a slightly more sophisticated way, is to show how in very intuitive terms there was an argu-ment based on the context, the utterance and general expectations about the behaviour of speakers, that would justify the particular interpretation chosen. What they fail to show is that on the same basis, an equally convincing justification could not have been given for some other interpretation that was not in fact chosen. There may be a whole variety of interpretations that would meet whatever standards of truthfulness, informativeness, relevance and clarity have been proposed or envis-aged so far. The theory needs improving at a fundamental level before it can be fruitfully applied to particular cases. In his William James Lectures, Grice put forward an idea of fundamental import-ance: that the very act of communicating creates expectations which it then exploits. Grice himself first applied this idea and its elaboration in terms of the maxims to a rather limited problem of linguistic philosophy: do logical connectives (‘and’, ‘or’, ‘if . . . then’) have the same meaning in natural languages as they do in logic? He argued that the richer meaning these connectives seem to have in natural languages can be explained in terms not of word meaning but of implicature. He then suggested that this approach could have wider applications: that the task of linguistic semantics could be considerably simplified by treating a large array of problems in terms of implicatures. And indeed, the study of implicature along Gricean lines has become a major concern of pragmatics. We believe that the basic idea of Grice’s William James Lectures has even wider implications: it offers a way of developing the analysis of inferential communication, suggested by Grice him-self in ‘Meaning’ (1957), into an explanatory model. To achieve this, however, we must leave aside the various elaborations of Grice’s original hunches and the sophisticated, though empirically rather empty debates they have given rise to. What is needed is an attempt to rethink, in psychologically realistic terms, such basic questions as: What form of shared information is available to humans? How is shared information exploited in communication? What is relevance and how is it achieved? What role does the search for relevance play in communication? It is to these questions that we now turn.