Abstract

Grice’s so-called ‘theory of conversation’ (Grice 1967a) establishes a basic distinction between two aspects of utterance meaning: what is said and what is implicated. Some authors (Carston (1988), Recanati (1989), Sperber and Wilson (1986)) have criticized this distinction and, particularly, its application to the pragmatic analysis of several linguistic phenomena, giving rise to an interesting debate on the delimitation of the different aspects of utterance meaning. Bach (1994) enters the discussion with a proposal of revision of Grice’s original distinction, including a new category: what is implicited. The aim of this paper is to participate in this debate paying attention to some questions concerning the Gricean ‘tests’ of cancelability and non-detachability for the different aspects of utterance meaning. More specifically, our claim is that these tests support Bach’s (1994) triple distinction among what is said, impliciture, and implicature, because we can establish the following results.