JENNIFER M. SAULWHAT IS SAID AND PSYCHOLOGICAL REALITY; GRICE’SPROJECT AND RELEVANCE THEORISTS’ CRITICISMSOne of the most important aspects of Grice’s theory of conversationis the drawing of a borderline between what is said and what is implic-ated. Grice’s views concerning this borderline have been strongly andinfluentially criticised by relevance theorists. In particular, it has becomeincreasingly widely accepted that Grice’s notion of what is said is too lim-ited, and that pragmatics has a far larger role to play in determining what issaid than Grice would have allowed. (See for example Bezuidenhuit 1996;Blakemore 1987; Carston 1991; Recanati 1991, 1993, 2001; Sperber andWilson 1986; Wilson and Sperber 1981.) In this paper, I argue that therejection of Grice has moved too swiftly, as a key line of objection whichhas led to this rejection is flawed. The flaw, we will see, is that relevancetheorists rely on a misunderstanding of Grice’s project in his theory ofconversation. I am not arguing that Grice’s versions of saying and implic-ating are right in all details, but simply that certain widespread reasons forrejecting his theory are based on misconceptions.1Relevance theorists, I will suggest, systematically misunderstand Griceby taking him to be engaged in the same project that they are: makingsense of the psychological processes by which we interpret utterances.Notions involved with this project will need to be ones that are relevantto the psychology of utterance interpretation. Thus, it is only reasonablethat relevance theorists will require that what is said and what is implic-ated should be psychologically real to the audience. (We will see that thisrequirement plays a crucial role in their arguments against Grice.) Grice,I will argue, was not pursuing this project. Rather, I will suggest that hewas trying to make sense of quite a different notion of what is said: one onwhich both speaker and audience may be wrong about what is said. On thissort of notion, psychological reality is not a requirement. So objections toGrice based on a requirement of psychological reality will fail.1For an excellent discussion which raises many serious problems still facing Grice, seeDavis (1998). For responses to some (but not all) of these problems, see Saul (2001).Linguistics and Philosophy 25: 347–372, 2002.© 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.348 JENNIFER M. SAULOnce Grice’s project and that of relevance theorists are seen as distinct,it will be clear that they can happily coexist.2They are simply discussingdifferent subject matters. One may start to wonder, however, about whois really discussing what is said, a topic that both camps claim. I willnot attempt a conclusive answer to this question. But I will suggest thatGrice’s view, despite certain shortcomings, has advantages which seem alltoo often to have gone unnoticed.1. WILSON AND SPERBER’S EARLY ATTACK ON GRICEThe best known work by relevance theorists is, of course, Dan Sperberand Deirdre Wilson’s book, Relevance: Communication and Cognition(Sperber and Wilson 1986). But although it is clear that they view Grice’sversion of the saying/implicating distinction as a competitor to theirs(Sperber and Wilson 1986: 183), and that they prefer their own versionof this distinction, they are not very explicit in their criticism of Grice onthis point. An earlier paper of theirs (Wilson and Sperber 1981), containsmuch more detailed attacks on Grice’s views. This paper, I will argue,involves systematic misunderstandings of both the overall aims of Grice’swork and the details of his theory. As we turn later to relevance theory inPart 2, we will see that these misunderstandings persist, and continue tocolour relevance theorists’ thoughts about Grice.2. WILSON,SPERBER, AND GRICE:AUDIENCE INTERPRETATION2.1. Wilson and Sperber on Grice’s GoalsWilson and Sperber (1981) begin with the claim that, in his theory ofimplicature, “Grice seems to be attempting to provide a framework intowhich every aspect of the interpretation of an utterance can be fitted”(1981: 156). In their first footnote, they mention that “Grice’s theory isin fact an account of how utterances are interpreted ...”(1981: 175, foot-note 1). They claim that the distinction between what is said and what isimplicated is meant to be crucial to understanding interpretation, and thatGrice takes it that “every aspect of interpretation can be assigned to one2More cautiously: they can happily coexist so far as this conflict goes. There are,of course, other conflicts that might prevent happy coexistence. One example of such aconflict is over the role in the audience’s reasoning of the supposition that the speakerintends her intention to be recognised. For more on this conflict see Bach (forthcoming).WHAT IS SAID AND PSYCHOLOGICAL REALITY 349or the other category” (1981: 156).3Wilson and Sperber, then, are veryexplicit that they take Grice’s goal to be that of accurately describing theprocess by which utterances are interpreted. Their own goal, they state,is “to do greater justice to the processes involved in the interpretation ofutterances” (1981: 156). It is very clear throughout the paper that theirconcern is with what interpretations audiences actually arrive at, and withhow (psychologically) they get to these interpretations. Their improvementon Grice, then, is meant to be the provision of a better description of theutterance interpretation process.2.2. Grice’s Real GoalsAll of the above represent serious misunderstandings of Grice’s goals.An accurate description of the utterance interpretation process would be awonderful thing to have, and pursuing it is a very worthwhile project. Butit was not Grice’s project. Grice’s theory of implicature was formulated asa response to what he saw as the excesses of Ordinary Language Philo-sophy. In particular, it was meant to provide a corrective to the tendencyto argue too swiftly from facts of usage to facts of meaning. (See Grice1989: “Prolegomena”.) Grice’s immediate goal was to find a way to defendthe traditional understanding of logical vocabulary like ‘and’ which couldrespect the facts of ordinary usage rather than dismissing them as faultsof an imperfect natural language. Nowhere does he cite as a goal that ofgiving a psychologically accurate description of utterance interpretation.Grice, of course, had plenty of other language-related interests.