MEANING BEYOND WORDS
Pragmatics, Cognition, and the Architecture of Human Communication
Philosophy of Language and Linguistic Pragmatics
After H. P. Grice, Dan Sperber, Deirdre Wilson, and Robin Carston
This post offers a systematic account of how human beings communicate meaning beyond what language encodes. Integrating philosophy of language, linguistic pragmatics, cognitive science, and experimental psychology, it argues that communication is fundamentally inferential rather than code-based. Moving beyond traditional semantics–pragmatics dichotomies, the post develops a cognitively grounded theory in which pragmatic inference contributes directly to truth-conditional content, metaphorical understanding, and social cognition. Inspired by the Gricean program and developed through Relevance Theory, this post positions pragmatics not as a peripheral add-on to linguistic theory but as a core component of human cognitive architecture.
Preface: Why Meaning Cannot Be Read Off Words
Human communication routinely succeeds despite radical underdetermination by linguistic form. Speakers say less than they mean; hearers understand more than is said. This gap between encoded meaning and communicated meaning is not an accident or imperfection of language; it is its defining feature.
Philosophy of language and linguistics have long struggled with this fact. Classical semantics attempted to explain meaning through truth conditions alone. Structural linguistics focused on formal systems abstracted from use. Yet everyday communication proceeds effortlessly through inference, context-sensitivity, and shared cognitive expectations.
This post begins from a simple but disruptive claim: there is no adequate theory of meaning that does not place pragmatics at its center.
PART I: FROM CODE TO INFERENCE
1: The Gricean Revolution and Its Limits
1.1 Meaning as Intention
H. P. Grice transformed the study of meaning by shifting attention from words to minds. Meaning, for Grice, is fundamentally non-natural: it arises from communicative intentions recognized by an audience. Linguistic meaning is derivative, a conventionalized system for making intentions manifest.
Two distinctions introduced by Grice remain foundational:
Linguistic meaning vs. speaker meaning
What is said vs. what is implicated
These distinctions reframed communication as a cooperative, inferential activity grounded in shared rationality.
1.2 Conversational Maxims and Implicature
Grice’s conversational maxims, Quality, Quantity, Relevance, and Manner, are not social rules but rational expectations. Hearers assume speakers are cooperative and reason backwards from apparent violations to inferred meanings.
Implicature thus emerges as a principled, inferential phenomenon rather than stylistic ornamentation.
1.3 The Limits of the Gricean Framework
Despite its power, the Gricean model leaves critical questions unresolved:
How much meaning is explicit?
Where does literal meaning end and inference begin?
How is context constrained rather than infinite?
These questions motivate post-Gricean pragmatics.
2: Against the Code Model of Communication
The classical “code model” treats communication as encoding and decoding messages. This model fails empirically and conceptually.
Language encodes only partial information. Communication succeeds because hearers treat utterances as evidence of speaker intentions rather than as self-contained messages.
Gestures, intonation, facial expression, and environmental cues function alongside linguistic forms as inputs to inference. Communication is thus multimodal and evidential, not symbolic transmission.
PART II: RELEVANCE THEORY AND COGNITIVE PRAGMATICS
3: The Cognitive Principle of Relevance
Relevance Theory replaces multiple conversational maxims with a single cognitive principle:
Human cognition tends to maximize relevance.
Relevance is defined as a balance between:
Cognitive effects (new conclusions, strengthened beliefs)
Processing effort
Hearers automatically expect utterances to be optimally relevant, guiding interpretation along the path of least effort.
This principle explains both the efficiency and the boundedness of contextual inference.
4: Explicature and the Collapse of the Semantics–Pragmatics Divide
4.1 Pragmatic Enrichment
Utterances rarely express complete propositions without pragmatic enrichment:
“It’s raining” → It’s raining here, now
“John is ready” → Ready for some contextually salient activity
These enrichments are not implicatures. They contribute to truth-conditional content.
4.2 Explicature vs. Implicature
Relevance Theory distinguishes:
Explicature: pragmatically enriched explicit content
Implicature: additional inferred meaning
This distinction undermines the traditional equation of semantics with truth conditions and pragmatics with “extra meaning.”
Truth-conditional content itself is partly pragmatic.
5: Non-Truth-Conditional Meaning and Encoded Constraints
Elements such as discourse connectives (“however,” “although”) and evaluative adverbials (“fortunately”) encode meaning without affecting truth conditions.
This shows that:
Encoded meaning ≠ truth-conditional meaning
Semantics itself is heterogeneous
Meaning cannot be neatly partitioned into semantic and pragmatic domains.
PART III: CONTEXT, MODULARITY, AND COGNITIVE ARCHITECTURE
6: The Problem of Context
Critics argue that pragmatics risks becoming a “theory of everything,” given the apparent infinity of contextual factors.
Relevance Theory resolves this by rejecting exhaustive context search. Instead, it posits:
Accessibility-based selection
Early stopping once sufficient cognitive effects are achieved
Context is not limitless in practice, even if it is in principle.
7: Modularity, Syntax, and Interpretation
The linguistic system functions as a modular decoding device, producing a logical form. Pragmatics operates on this output using general cognitive resources.
This architecture preserves:
Modularity at the level of grammar
Flexibility at the level of interpretation
It challenges views that treat semantics as a direct mapping between language and the world.
PART IV: METAPHOR, FIGURATIVE THOUGHT, AND IMAGINATION
8: Why Metaphor Is a Problem
Metaphor poses a deep puzzle: humans understand utterances that are literally false yet richly meaningful.
“My lawyer is a shark” communicates something precise, not confusion.
8.1 Beyond Maxim-Flouting
Gricean accounts treat metaphor as maxim violation. This explains recognition, not comprehension.
8.2 Lexical Modulation
Simple metaphors involve pragmatic adjustment of lexical meaning: shark broadens to include aggressive humans.
This affects the explicature itself.
8.3 Beyond Words: Mental Imagery and Scenarios
Extended metaphors abandon literal meaning altogether. They evoke imagistic scenarios from which implications are drawn.
Meaning here is not decoded but constructed.
PART V: PRAGMATICS BEYOND THEORY
9: Pragmatics as Cognitive Science
Pragmatics is a sub-discipline of cognitive science, continuous with psychology and neuroscience.
Experimental work on scalar implicatures shows that:
Implicatures are context-sensitive
They incur processing costs
They are not automatic defaults
These findings support relevance-theoretic predictions.
10: Pragmatics and Clinical Populations
Individuals with autism or developmental language disorder often struggle with metaphor, irony, and indirectness.
Relevance Theory offers explanations:
Difficulties with inferential effort
Reduced sensitivity to relevance expectations
This has implications for diagnosis and intervention.
11: Philosophy and Linguistics Reconciled
The boundary between philosophy of language and linguistic pragmatics has largely collapsed.
Philosophy contributes:
Conceptual clarity
Theories of intention and representation
Linguistics contributes:
Empirical grounding
Experimental validation
Modern pragmatics is irreducibly interdisciplinary.
Conclusion: Meaning as Cognitive Achievement
Meaning is not located in words, sentences, or structures. It is an achievement of human cognition under constraints of relevance, effort, and social expectation.
Language underdetermines meaning because humans are designed to infer.
To study pragmatics is to study:
How minds coordinate
How thoughts become public
How communication succeeds despite minimal code
The central lesson of this post is simple but radical:
Meaning is not transmitted. It is inferred.
Sources
Professor Robyn Carston: Robyn Carston
