Reflection: On indeterminacy

Grice confined his analysis of meaning to the speaker’s thoughts, beliefs, desires, attitudes, intentions and so on through his definition of meaning nn, namely, the speaker’s intention that the hearer recognize what thought, belief and so on is intended by the speaker to be recognized by the hearer, thereby allowing precision in modelling speaker meaning. However, defining pragmatic meaning representations in terms of the mental states of speakers is what makes it so difficult to precisely pin down meanings that go beyond what is said. As we saw from the example of Charlie Brown it is difficult to determine exactly what Lucy meant in two ways: (1) we do not know in what way Lucy thinks Charlie Brown is unsuitable for shoveling snow, and (2) we do not know how certain she is about her belief. This reflects, more generally, the two types of indeterminacy that are an inevitable feature of many pragmatic meaning representations:

• Type 1 indeterminacy in terms of the conceptual or informational content of meaning representations.

• Type 2 indeterminacy in terms of the degree of speaker commitment to that meaning representation.

Grice’s definition of meaning nn thus creates a natural source of indeterminacy as it is being pinned to the mental states of speakers. Grice, perhaps wisely, avoided the issue of the indeterminacy of many pragmatic meaning representations by shifting such problems to the hearer, and to understandings of what is meant that arise in communicative interaction and discourse more generally.