ABSTRACT
This chapter presents and discusses the most influential ideas proposed by the philosopher Paul Grice. It focuses in particular on the distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘non-natural’ meaning and the idea that ultimately rational principles guide utterance interpretation. Grice’s pragmatic principles apply in cases of non-natural meaning and help to explain how we often understand more from an utterance than what the words themselves say. This was a significant breakthrough in understanding how utterances are affected by the contexts in which they are produced and led to the development of pragmatic theories in the late twentieth century.
