Limitations of Non-Gricean Approaches to the Evolution of Human Communicative Abilities

Abstract

In this paper, I examine two non-Gricean approaches to the evolution of human communicative abilities: Mitchell S. Green’s account of organic meaning and Dorit Bar-On’s account of expressive communication. I argue that the non-Gricean approaches in question face certain problems: i) they focus on the adaptive function of communicative behaviours and ignore questions about their mechanisms, ontogeny and phylogeny; ii) the notion of organic meaning does not constitute an intermediate form between natural and non-natural meaning but should rather be understood as a special case of natural meaning; iii) the non-Gricean approaches under scrutiny cannot explain the transition from dyadic to triadic communication. I also outline the differences between Gricean and non-Gricean approaches and argue against the usefulness of the non-Gricean approaches discussed in this paper in explaining the evolution of human communicative abilities.