H. P. Grice, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
The question has a pleasing self-referential quality, and I shall take it seriously rather than treat it as a joke, though it is also rather a good joke. What I mean — in the technical sense I developed — is a matter of intention, recognition, and the role that recognition plays in producing a response. The core of the analysis, stated as carefully as I could manage in Meaning (the 1957 paper where I drew the distinction between natural and non-natural meaning), runs roughly as follows: for an utterer A to mean something by an utterance x, A must intend to induce some effect in an audience, must intend the audience to recognise that intention, and must intend that recognition itself to function as at least part of the audience's reason for the effect.1
The third condition is what does the real philosophical work, and it is what separates genuine communication from mere manipulation or causal nudging. Consider the avaricious man I want out of my room. I throw a pound note out of the window. He goes. But I have not meant anything by this, because his recognition of my purpose plays no part in getting him to leave — the money works causally, independently of whether he sees through my intention.2
If instead I had pointed to the door, the pointing would be a meaningful utterance precisely because the recognition of my intention is what I intend to be effective.3 The same point emerges from the policeman cases: the officer who stands in the road stops the car causally; the officer who waves stops it by meaning something — by intending the driver to recognise the intention and to take that recognition as a reason.4
Now, the intended effect must also be of the right kind. Suppose I condition someone so that whenever he recognises a particular grunt of mine, he blushes or contracts some ailment. The recognition is present; the intention is present. And yet we should not want to say the grunt means anything.5 Why not? Because the effect — the blush, the malady — is not within the audience's control; recognition of my intention is a cause of it, not a reason.6
For meaning_NN to occur, the recognition must function as a reason — something the audience can act on, weigh, accept or refuse — rather than as a mere trigger. The tobacconist cases sharpen this further. When I walk into an unfamiliar shop and put down money before receiving my cigarettes, nothing has been meant; I am simply providing an inducement, and the tobacconist's handing over the goods does not depend on recognising any intention of mine beyond the bare transactional one.7
When I put down my regular 43 cents at my regular tobacconist's, something is meant — namely, that I want a pack of brand X — because the tobacconist recognises, and is intended to recognise, what he is intended to do from the utterance itself, and that recognition is part of his reason for acting.8 One further restriction deserves mention: only the primary intention is relevant to meaning.
If I intend to induce effect E, and intend E to lead on to some further effect F, then F's occurrence depends solely on E and not at all on the audience's recognition of my intention to produce E. So what I intend him to do with the information I give him is not part of what my utterance means.9 So: what does Grice mean? Roughly — that communication is not the causal production of effects but the rational production of effects through the recognition of intentions.
The mechanism is reflexive, the recognition is internal to the effect, and it is that reflexivity which marks off meaning from everything else we might do to one another with words, gestures, photographs, or pound notes thrown out of windows.
A must intend to induce by x a belief in an audience, and he must also intend his utterance to be recognized as so intended... the recognition is intended by A to play its part in inducing the belief.Studies in the Way of Words, pp. 228–229
I have a very avaricious man in my room, and I want him to go; so I throw a pound note out of the window. Is there here any utterance with a meaning? No, because in behaving as I did, I did not intend his recognition of my purpose to be in any way effective in getting him to go.Studies in the Way of Words, pp. 227–228
If, on the other hand, I had pointed to the door or given him a little push, then my behavior might well be held to constitute a meaningful utterance, just because the recognition of my intention would be intended by me to be effective in speeding his departure.Studies in the Way of Words, pp. 227–228
Another pair of cases would be (1) a policeman who stops a car by standing in its way and (2) a policeman who stops a car by waving.Studies in the Way of Words, pp. 227–228
Suppose I discovered some person so constituted that, when I told him that whenever I grunted in a special way I wanted him to blush or to incur some physical malady, thereafter whenever he recognized the grunt (and with it my intention), he did blush or incur the malady. Should we then want to say that the grunt meant something? I do not think so.Studies in the Way of Words, p. 229
for x to have meaning, the intended effect must be something which in some sense is within the control of the audience, or that in some sense of 'reason' the recognition of the intention behind x is for the audience a reason and not merely a cause.Studies in the Way of Words, p. 229
I go into a tobacconist's shop, ask for a pack of my favorite cigarettes, and when the unusually suspicious tobacconist shows that he wants to see the color of my money before he hands over the goods, I put down the price of the cigarettes on the counter. Here nothing has been meant.Studies in the Way of Words, pp. 102–103
I go to my regular tobacconist... I say nothing, but put down 43 cents. The tobacconist recognizes my need and hands over the pack. Here, I think, by putting down 43 cents, I meant something—namely, that I wanted a pack of brand X.Studies in the Way of Words, pp. 102–103
if I intend to get a man to do something by giving him some information, it cannot be regarded as relevant to the meaning of my utterance to describe what I intend him to do.Studies in the Way of Words, p. 229