A Gricean Theory of Malaprops

Abstract

Gricean intentionalists hold that what a speaker says and means by a linguistic utterance is determined by the speaker's communicative intention. On this view, one cannot really say anything without meaning it as well. Conventionalists argue, however, that malapropisms provide powerful counterexamples to this claim. I present two arguments against the conventionalist and sketch a new Gricean theory of speech errors, called the misarticulation theory. On this view, malapropisms are understood as a special case of mispronunciation. I argue that the Gricean theory is supported by empirical work in phonetics and phonology and, also, that conventionalism inevitably fails to do this work justice. I conclude, from this, that the conventionalist fails to show that malapropisms constitute a counterexample to a Gricean theory.

Linguistic Mistakes

“…Thus, contrary to what Millar says, you didn't plausibly say of the tree that it is an oak and hence you didn't misuse the word after all. Hence, slips of the tongue are not examples of linguistic mistakes (compare also Unnsteinsson, 2017). (Bilgrami, 1993: 134-135, compare Davidson, 1992: 261, 1994: 9, Wikforss, 2001 The basic idea behind the rejoinder is that the appearance that the above cases constitute misuses and the reasons why we adjust our understanding and usage are due to the presence of intentions to speak like others do.…”

A pluralistic theory of wordhood

“…Malapropisms and speech errors are examples in point. One might produce an utterance of “You shouldn't trust Paul, he is erudite” in the attempt to communicate that the addressee should not trust Paul because Paul is erratic , and still succeed in conveying the desired meaning because the listener is clever enough to infer that the intended adjective was not the one cued by the utterance's observable properties (see Predelli, 2010; Unnsteinsson, 2017). In this scenario, we seem to have both interpretive success, and lack of correspondence between the word articulated by the speaker ( erudite ) and the word cognized by the listener ( erratic ) to perform meaning recovery.…”

Silencing without Convention

“…But see also Maitra and McGowan (2010) for some doubts about Wieland's conclusions. For general arguments against conventionalism see Strawson (1964); Schiffer (1972); Bach and Harnish (1979); Harris (2016); Unnsteinsson (2017a). 10 Grice (1969, 1989: 106-112) and others have given counterexamples to the first formulation and so the second is added as a possible fallback position.…”

“…So, for example, if one makes a slip of the tongue, uttering ‘wasabi’ where one meant to say ‘Wahabi’, one's utterance is about wasabi in virtue of those rules (cf. Unnsteinsson, ). Further, speakers' intentions don't change the conventionally determined meaning of the sentences uttered.…”

“…But see also Maitra and McGowan () for some doubts about Wieland's conclusions. For general arguments against conventionalism see Strawson (); Schiffer (); Bach and Harnish (); Harris (); Unnsteinsson ().…”