Limitations of Non-Gricean Approaches to the Evolution of Human Communicative Abilities

Year, pages: 2021, 360 - 398

In this paper, I examine two non-Gricean approaches to the evolution of human communicative abilities: Mitchell S. Green’s ac- count of organic meaning and Dorit Bar-On’s account of expressive communication. I argue that the non-Gricean approaches in question face certain problems: i) they focus on the adaptive function of communicative behaviours and ignore questions about their mechanisms, ontogeny and phylogeny; ii) the notion of organic meaning does not constitute an intermediate form between natural and non-natural meaning but should rather be understood as a special case of natural meaning; iii) the non-Gricean approaches under scrutiny cannot ex- plain the transition from dyadic to triadic communication. I also outline the differences between Gricean and non-Gricean approaches and argue against the usefulness of the non-Gricean approaches discussed in this paper in explaining the evolution of human communicative abilities.

Włodarczyk, M. 2021. Limitations of Non-Gricean Approaches to the Evolution of Human Communicative Abilities. In Organon F, vol. 28, no.2, pp. 360-398. 1335-0668. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2021.28205

Włodarczyk, M. (2021). Limitations of Non-Gricean Approaches to the Evolution of Human Communicative Abilities. Organon F, 28(2), 360-398. 1335-0668. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2021.28205

Publisher: Filozofický ústav SAV, Filosofický ústav AVČR

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