What is said

Abstract

A misunderstanding of Grice's distinction between saying and implicating leads at least one theorist to misconstrue the pragmatics/semantics distinction. I clarify the Gricean picture, hoping to shed light on debates about the relationship between pragmatics and semantics. This paper begins with a presentation of Grice's theoretical distinction between saying and implicating, emphasizing its grounding in the intuitive distinction between conveying something literally and directly, and merely suggesting or hinting it. I point out that some-perhaps most-followers of Grice believe that, in some way, what is implicated depends on what is said. F. Récanati (Récanati, François, 1993. Direct Reference: From Language to Thought. Blackwell, Oxford, UK.) is one example. The thought seems to be that the hearer in a conversation needs to use what is said in a calculation to determine what is implicated. After speculating that Griceans who accept the dependency claim are unduly focused on literal uses of language, I argue that the dependency claim is mistaken. Rejecting dependency undermines Récanati's argument for a particular way of separating semantics from pragmatics. I conclude by exploring how what is said and what is implicated may be construed without dependency. © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.