Theme: Philosophy

As an employer, I was regularly asked to write letters of recommendation for former employees. It always made me think of the example by British philosopher Paul Grice about a professor who recommends a student: ‘Dear Sir, Mr. X’s command of English is excellent, and his attendance at tutorials has been regular. Yours faithfully.’ Grice demonstrates that what is left unsaid can determine the meaning of a statement.

In logic, there is a real obsession with the concepts of truth and meaning – and the relationship between them. Every statement has a meaning, which may or may not be true. That is little help in Grice’s example. Here, we infer that the professor considers the candidate unsuitable for the job, without saying so. What he is saying doesn’t give the information you would expect and is therefore irrelevant.

So the concept of ‘relevance’ is, like truth, a rather important component of ‘meaning’. Such terms generally fall outside the field of classic logic, heading more in the direction of linguistics. Which is ironic, since logic seeks to determine meaning and truth. Thinkers such as Chomsky, Sperber, Wilson and Grice have said some interesting things about implicit meanings in communication. I stumbled upon their work when studying how and why the unsaid says something.

Grice is not that well-known. He was a philosopher who started his career in Oxford, before the war. In 1967, he emigrated to the US, where he became a professor at Berkeley, researching primarily the theory of ‘meaning’. It took a while before I grasped that Grice makes use of the fact that in English, the word ‘meaning’ can also mean ‘intention’. (In my native tongue, that is not the case. In Germanic languages, the word for meaning is closer to ‘denotation’ and not a homonym.) And that’s exactly what Grice’s work was about.

One of his significant contributions was coining the term ‘implicature’. In conversation, a person can convey meanings beyond literal words. This doesn’t mean they want their conversation partner to misunderstand their intentions. On the contrary, they aim for clarity. However, communication relies not only on words but also on context and assumptions about the listener’s knowledge. It involves certain unwritten rules that create expectations among participants. If someone intentionally deviates from these expectations, it can be quite revealing.

These unwritten rules are part of the broader principle of ‘cooperation’—communication is a collaborative effort where people strive to make their messages clear to each other. Grice calls the rules ‘maxims’:

• Quantity: Be as informative as possible. Give as much information as necessary, but no more than that.

• Quality: Aspire to be truthful. Don’t say anything you’re not sure is true, or you don’t know at all.

• Relevance: Stick to the subject at hand and contribute to the conversation in a way that’s appropriate for the context.

• Manner: Be clear. Avoid ambiguity. Be concise and orderly.

The letter has both a straightforward surface meaning and an underlying implication explained by Grice’s theory. In the context of a professor recommending a student for a role, the prospective employer would expect some information about the student’s qualifications. While the student’s knowledge of English is relevant, mentioning their attendance at tutorials is not. This makes the message surprising in terms of both quantity—because not much is said—and relevance. Therefore, the implication is that the professor does not consider the student suitable.

This explanation might not seem particularly engaging, but Grice’s theory can be applied to more complex contexts: without some expectation value, there is no meaning. Without explicitly saying so, the speaker would otherwise be unable to convey any implication. And that expectation can only occur through context and the unwritten rules governing communication.