NeoGricean

NeoGricean refers to a school of thought in pragmatics that builds upon the work of H.P. Grice. Grice's foundational theory of conversational implicature proposed that participants in conversation generally cooperate to achieve their communicative goals, adhering to a Cooperative Principle and four maxims: quantity, quality, relation, and manner. NeoGriceans, while largely accepting Grice's core ideas, have sought to refine, extend, and sometimes challenge aspects of his original framework.

Key developments within NeoGricean pragmatics include the distinction between generalized conversational implicatures (GCIs) and particularized conversational implicatures (PCIs). GCIs are those that arise by default in the absence of special circumstances, whereas PCIs require specific contextual information to be understood. This distinction was crucial for explaining how certain meanings are conventionally associated with linguistic expressions.

Furthermore, NeoGriceans have explored the relationship between semantics and pragmatics. They argue that pragmatic inferences often operate on a semantic level, meaning that the literal meaning of an utterance can be influenced by pragmatic principles even before implicatures are generated. This has led to debates about the precise boundary between what is said (semantic content) and what is implicated.

NeoGricean approaches have also addressed phenomena such as scalar implicatures (e.g., "Some A are B" implicating "Not all A are B"), which are seen as a prominent type of GCI. The work in this area has contributed significantly to our understanding of how meaning is communicated beyond literal linguistic content, emphasizing the inferential nature of human communication.