Pragmatic meaning and meaning-actions

A second key issue in relation to pragmatic meaning in context, which came up in our discussion of meaning representations, is that it can be analyzed as arising through various “meaning-actions”, including meaning, saying, implying, suggesting, hinting, insinuating, indicating, alluding, inferring and so on. This was a point that Grice himself acknowledged in coining the technical notions of implicate/implicature/implicatum (Grice [1975]1989: 24), which conflated rather than distinguished between these different types of meaning-actions. There has only been limited work on possible similarities and differences between these (Bertuccelli-Papi 1996; Parret 1994; Weizman 1985). Wierzbicka (1987), for instance, makes the following distinctions between imply, hint and insinuate:

hint: “one is thinking something that one would quite like to say aloud, but that one refrains from doing so – presumably because one thinks that one shouldn’t say it”

(Wierzbicka 1987: 271)

imply: “the speaker wants to cause the addressee to think something ... [but] he refrains from saying the thing that he wants to cause them to think. Instead, he says something else ... the speaker seems to assume that the addressee will be able to ‘uncover’ the hidden meaning as if it were somehow provided in the utterance itself – being hidden, but present”

(ibid.: 272, original emphasis)

insinuate: the speaker “wants to cause his addressee to think something bad about someone ... [but] the speaker doesn’t want his information to be too obvious ... the attitude is ‘I don’t want people to be sure that I want to cause them to think this’ ”

(ibid.: 273)

What is common across all three glosses is that the speaker wants others to think one thing by saying something else. What differentiates hinting and implying is that the speaker expects others will understand what is implied, while others may only understand what is hinted at (cf. Parrett 1994: 232). This is a function of the recipient’s degree of certainty about the content of the hint, as well as the degree to which the speaker is committed to that meaning. The speaker may also think he or she should not say what is being hinted at, while there is no such necessary constraint on what is implied. Insinuating, on the other hand, involves the speaker wanting others to think something bad about the figure or target, as well as wanting to ensure he or she cannot be held accountable for meaning such a thing (cf. Austin 1962[1975]: 105). However, since the three meaning-actions are only distinguished from the speaker’s perspective by Wierzbicka in the above glosses, there is still more work to be done to better understand how such nuances impact on pragmatic meanings in situational contexts.

One example of this is the work by Bertuccelli-Papi (1996) on insinuating. She suggests that the act of insinuating “occurs when A wants B to know p but does not want B to judge that A wanted to tell him p” (where A is the speaker, B is the addressee, and p is what is insinuated) (Bertuccelli-Papi 1996: 197). She then examines the machinations of Iago in Shakespeare’s play, Othello, as an example par excellence of this kind of pragmatic meaning. Iago works on planting doubt in Othello’s mind about his relationship with Desdemona: in particular, the idea that she may be having an affair with Cassio. Take the following excerpt from Act III:

Here, Iago brings up the issue of Cassio’s relationship with Desdemona, and then subtly steers the conversation to the question of Cassio’s “honesty”. While Iago subsequently declares Why then I thinke Cassio’s an honest man, his initial expression of uncertainty (My lord, for ought [all] I know), is enough to plant a seed of doubt’ about Cassio in Othello’s mind. This ultimately leads Othello to doubt Desdemona’s faithfulness to him, which results in disastrous consequences for all.

There is, however, still much to be done in this area, as investigations of meaning-actions have been remarkably limited thus far. The characterization of meaning-actions in English – and indeed across other languages – thus remains an important area for future investigation in our pursuit of a better understanding of how pragmatic meaning arises in situated contexts