Grice on Meaning and Intention [Sean Wammer]

1.

I agree with Grice that intention should play an important role in some utterance's meaning. Grice says that for something to have meaning_NN, the utterer has to intend to convey information to an audience, and the audience must get that information because they recognize this intention by the utterer (Grice 1957, 384). If you do not intend to convey anything by a yawn or a sigh, you can at least claim that the gesture was meaningless (perhaps it was just natural), and this is why you can say, "I didn't mean anything by it!" when someone catches you yawning while they are talking to you.

2.

I disagree that an utterance only has meaning_NN if the utterer intended an audience to recognize the intention and understand the utterer's meaning (meaning can be expressed without being conveyed). I think utterances can mean_NN something merely when someone intends them to, even when they lack an audience or they don't intend that audience to understand the meaning_NN or recognize the intention. For example, I may turn my back to someone I was talking to and roll my eyes, intending to convey disgust without them knowing; I claim the eye roll still has very deliberate, "unnatural" meaning, despite the lack of an audience to understand the meaning and recognize my intention to express it. 

3.

I am curious about what Grice has to say about misread intentions or utterances. If I am misunderstood by my audience, what meaning does my utterance have? Do we want to say that the meaning is exactly what I intended, but it was just not conveyed successfully? Do we want to say that the meaning is exactly what the audience understood it to be, contingent on what they took to be my intention? Or do we want to say that the utterance is meaningless because there was no meaning conveyed and the intention was not recognized by the audience?

--Sean Wammer