The other day I felt rather bored, so I picked up this book from the Swimming-Pool Library, and to my amusement, Grice went back to me!
It's A. Ingraham, a booklet called, "Swain School Lectures," dated 1903. My grandmother had attended a school whose headmaster had been at Swain, and that's how it reached the Swimming-Pool Library. Ingraham, who looks like your veritable Gricean, writes:
"Language has seven functions:
First, to dissipate superfluous nervous activity.
Second, to direct motion in others, both men and animals
Third, to communicate ideas.
Fourth, as a means of expression.
Fifth, for the purposes of record.
Sixth, to set matters in motion (as in charms
and incantations)
Seventh, as an instrument of thinking
Eighth, to give delight merely as sound.
I try to formalise that in Gricean terms proper but somewhat fail.
Etc.
That's a joke, of course. Sorry, cannot feign a hoax. The thing is actually quoted by that rather boring Manx, Quirk in his rather more boring, The Uses of English, by that boring press, Longman. Quirk, who had a quirky sense of humour, finds amusement in Ingraham's ninth function, "to keep grammarians busy".
ReplyDelete