Questions: Speaker Meaning vs. Sentence Meaning

Question 1

Someone standing by an open window says, 'It's cold in here.' The room temperature is actually 65°F. What is the speaker meaning of the utterance?

• A. A sincere report that the room temperature is below comfortable levels
• B. An indirect request to close the window, using a statement about temperature
• C. A false statement, since 65°F is not objectively cold
• D. An expression of emotional discomfort unrelated to the window

Answer: (B)

The sentence meaning of 'It's cold in here' is a statement about the temperature. But in context — standing next to an open window — the speaker meaning is almost certainly an indirect speech act: a request to close the window. The speaker intends the hearer to recognize this and act accordingly. This illustrates why speaker meaning and sentence meaning must be tracked separately: the same sentence can serve completely different communicative functions depending on context and the speaker's intentions. Option A is what you would get if you only paid attention to sentence meaning.

Question 2

When someone says 'Yeah, right' sarcastically after a friend's implausible excuse, Grice's account explains that the irony works because:

• A. The words have developed a new conventional meaning in casual speech that is opposite to the literal meaning
• B. The speaker intends to communicate the opposite of the sentence meaning, and relies on the hearer recognizing this intention
• C. Irony is a failure of communication where the speaker's intentions are hidden from the hearer
• D. The sentence meaning and speaker meaning happen to coincide in ironic utterances

Answer: (B)

On the Gricean account, irony is not a matter of new word meanings — 'Yeah, right' still has its literal meaning. Irony works through a layered structure of intentions: the speaker means the opposite of what the words say, intends the hearer to recognize this, and intends that recognition itself to produce the communicative effect (conveying disbelief or mockery). The key is that both parties are aware of the gap between sentence meaning and speaker meaning. Strip away that mutual recognition, and irony would be misunderstood as sincere agreement.

Question 3

Speaker meaning can be the complete opposite of sentence meaning, as in irony.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: True

This is one of the most striking demonstrations of the sentence meaning / speaker meaning gap. When someone says 'That's just brilliant!' about an obviously terrible idea, the sentence meaning expresses genuine approval; the speaker meaning is critical disapproval. Both are real — the irony works precisely because the hearer can track both levels simultaneously. This shows that speaker meaning is not constrained to be a subset of or extension of sentence meaning; it can diverge radically, even being the logical opposite.

Question 4

Speaker meaning is simply whatever the speaker is currently thinking or feeling at the moment of utterance.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

Grice argued that speaker meaning is not merely a psychological state — it has a specific structure. To mean something, the speaker must (1) intend to produce an effect in the hearer, (2) intend the hearer to recognize that intention, and (3) intend that recognition to play a role in producing the effect. This layered intentionality is what distinguishes genuine communication from accidental signaling. If I sneeze and you infer I am sick, my sneezing doesn't mean 'I am sick' in the speaker-meaning sense — there was no intention structured around your recognition. Speaker meaning requires communicative intent, not just any mental content.

Question 5

Why, according to Grice's account, is speaker meaning not simply 'whatever the speaker has in mind'? What makes it a specifically communicative kind of meaning?

Model answer: Speaker meaning, on Grice's account, requires a specific structure of intentions: the speaker must intend to produce an effect in the hearer by means of the hearer's recognition of that very intention. This reflexive, mutual-recognition structure is what distinguishes genuine communication from accidental information transfer. A sneeze can convey that someone is sick, but the sneezer doesn't mean 'I am sick' — there was no intention structured around the hearer's recognition. Speaker meaning is essentially social and public, not just internal.

The Gricean analysis matters because it explains how communication can be intentional and yet also non-deceptive even when speaker meaning diverges from sentence meaning. It also has implications for the semantics/pragmatics boundary: if speaker meaning requires this complex intentional structure, then pragmatic interpretation is a sophisticated inferential process, not just 'reading minds.' The account also explains why successful irony, metaphor, and indirect speech acts require a cooperative audience — hearers must be trying to figure out what the speaker means, not just decoding word meanings.