The meaning of mean: Polysemy in disguise

Sammanfattning: Polysemy is quite a common phenomenon. Variation in meaning has been shown to be omnipresent in lnaguage (Lakoff 1987). Paul Grice (1957) touches upon this in his article ‘Meaning’. While primarily seeking to establish principles for all manner of human communication using language1, he uses the word mean to illustrate his examples. With the help of logic (in the philosophical sense), he establishes that the word mean actually has two meanings, which he calls natural and non-natural (Grice 1957).