On the rational basis of communication

• Event: Seminar
• Lecturer: Herbert H. Clark
• Date: 02 May 2017
• Duration: 2 hours
• Venue: Gothenburg

Communication is often said to be a rational behavior. As Grice (1975) put it, “Talking [is] a special case or variety of purposive, indeed rational behavior.” But what does it mean for a behavior to be rational? I will contrast two notions of rationality as they have been applied to language use, one cooperative (à la Grice) and the other interactive, and argue that both are legitimate. I will show how the interactive model, based on one type of rationality, accounts for a wide range of phenomena that are complementary for those accounted for in a Gricean cooperative model.