Paul Grice

Paul Grice was a contemporary British philosopher known primarily for his foundational contributions to pragmatics, the philosophical and linguistic study of rules and conventions underlying communication beyond the literal meanings of spoken words. He also made insightful observations in the fields of ethics, ontology, and ancient Greek philosophy. Grice’s work in the philosophy of language followed upon and augmented the groundbreaking speech act theory of British philosopher J.L. Austin (1911–60), which distinguished between the utterance...