Conversational implicatures of normative discourse

Francesca Poggi

pp. 251-271

in: Alessandro Capone, Marco Carapezza, Franco Lo Piparo (eds), Further advances in pragmatics and philosophy II, Berlin, Springer, 2019

Abstract

Grice (1967) formulated his famous maxims having mainly in mind the assertive discourse, i.e. a discourse which aims to inform, and can be true or false. However, as it is well known, norms do not aim to inform: they aim to guide behaviours, and, therefore, they are neither true nor false. However, Grice conceived of the cooperative principle as a general principle that also guides non-assertive conversations. Following a classical Gricean approach (although with some modifications), this essay aims to restate Gricean conversational maxims in order to make them applicable to normative discourse. The restatement will also seek to shed new light on debated issues of normative discourse, such as the relation of sub-contrariety between deontic concepts or the distinction between commands, on the one hand, and suggestions and requests, on the other. Moreover, it provides some clues to reconstruct the mechanisms through which we usually interpret certain utterances as normative, i.e. as instances of a normative discourse.