In _Practical Inferences_, the sometime White's prof. of moral philosophy and member of Austin's and Grice's playgroup, writes as he quotes from J. L. Austin
(who preceded Hare as White's Professor):
PERFORMATIVE UTTERANCE: Promising:
IMPLICIT:
(1) I shall be there
EXPLICIT:
(2) I promise I shall be there.
Hare writes (p. 192n).
"Austin's example (p.69).
IN MY DIALECT,"
He was from Devon, alas.
'WILL' WOULD BE MORE NORMAL
THAN 'SHALL' IN BOTH CASES."
Austin, like Grice, were from the bits that matter. Grice from the Very Heart of England, Harborne, in Staffs. -- later Warw. -- Austin from the less affluent Lancs. --.
This compares to Austin's use of 'voluntarily' and there's an
online essay which compares it to Professor Gilbert Ryle's use of
'voluntarily' (Ryle was Waynflete's Prof. of Metaphysical Philosophy at
Oxford).
The author of the essay wrote (relying on memory):
"If _two_ Oxford professors disagree on 'voluntarily' I can't see how _we_ can't", or
"It's rather sad to see even two Oxford professors disagreeing on that" --
-- implying that there's no hope for an easy solution to the issue at hand.
In this case above we have two
professors of _moral_ philosophy disagreeing (at that).
Sad -- but a token of the variety of the English geography, as it were.
Now, J. L. Austin was born in Lancashire in 1911 and educated in some
public school (English style). Hare was born in 1919 in -- BACKWELL "near
Bristol" -- So, not really Devon, but close enough (no cigar).
One should find if this was formerly part of GLOUCESTERSHIRE or SOMERSETSHIRE
or other... And I'm not sure he went to a public school. (His obit in The Guardian I
posted to Philos-L, available online.). As he should.
So, maybe the divergence is _socio-lectal_ and regional dialectal (Austin's
use being 'Northern' and Hare's being 'West Country').
Plus, there's a reverential side to Hare. He is writing, perhaps with some guilt, since he succeeded Austin on the job after his (Austin's demise). And Austin is already dead as Hare writes. -- i.e. he is not being nitpicking with an Austin alive, which could get you onto all sorts of 'flintier' experiences.
Now, compare this with this example by H. P. Grice. He was, then, from the 'Heart
of England', Staffoddshire/Warwickshire, and educated at a public school (Clifton,
Gloucestershire? -- originally?)
Grice quotes from _Regufee Conversations_.
I'm referring to Grice's lecture for the British Academy.
Grice does not mention what edition he is working with, who the translator is, etc. And I have not checked this.
The sentence he takes from _Refugee conversations_ is:
(3) If you inspect my books,
I shall not continue to be your finance
minister.
This is suppoed to be a _joke_. I don't know if Brecht meant it as a joke, for I wouldn't think this applies to native German. But then perhaps Brecht is writing in English. You never know with them refugees.
The context, Grice has it, is:
"Denmark was at one time plagued by a succession of corrupt finance
ministers, and to deal with this situation, a law was passed requiring
periodic inspection of the books of the Finance Minister. A certain Finance
Minister, when visited by the inspectors said to them [as per above]. They
retired in confusion. And only 18 months was it discovered that the Finance
Minister had spoken nothing than the literal truth." (Grice, p. 11).
Now, Grice speaks of exploiting
a modal 'ambibuity' here --
-- the Wallis's Rules, as we may call them. But
1. There is one problem here if we accept with Grice that _the truth_ was
said. Grice is suggesting that
(4) I shall not continue to be your Finance Minister
and
(5) I will not continue to be your Finance Minister
are _truth-conditionally_ 'equivalent'.
If they are _not_ (as it seems they are not) then the joke has to be understood
differently, or misunderstood, as the case might sadly be.
(I'm sure the last laugh is on Brecht, who would rather distance hisself from all this).
By saying (3), Grice opts, the Finance Minister can only (by Wallis's Rules) be
_predicting_ that he continues not to be the Finance Minister.
If we suppose that the inspectors inspected the books, and the Finance Minister was _discharged_ of his function, it is _true_ that he did not continue to be the finance minister. So far so good.
Now, the joke is that (3) can be read as reporting the utterer's
_determination_ not to continue
to be the finance minister (if the books are inspected).
Surely, one's being discharged of one's office does not count as a fulfilment of one's determination not to continue to be the finance minister.
I'm expressing myself clumsily, but I hope intelligibly.
Grice writes:
"This anecdote, IT SEEMS, EXPLOITS
A MODAL AMBIGUITY
IN THE FUTURE TENSE,
between
(a) the future indicated
or factual, and
(b) the future intentional."
The implication being that 'I shall' is 'future indicated or factual' --
what Grice later abbreviates as
"f" --,
and 'I will' the future intentional
(which he abbreviates as
'i').
"This ambiguity extends beyond the first person form of the tense: there is
a difference between
(6) There will-f be light (future factual)
Fiat lux, This blog.
and
(7) There will-i be light (future intentional).
Fiat lux. This blog.
"God might have uttered (7) while engaged in Creation".
Grice adds:
"SENSITIVE ENGLISH SPEAKERS
(WHICH MOST OF US ARE NOT)"
-- luckily I don't even _speak_ it unless I should --
"may be able to mark
this disticntion by discriminating between 'shall' and 'will'"
But then again they may not.
Here Grice comments on the PRIMACY OR PRIVILEGED ACCESS of the First Person. He is considering something he was thinking when he heard he had to go to London (from Oxford, quite a stretch if you Morris-drive) to deliver the lecture he is now delivering.
(8) I shall go to London.
Grice comments:
"(8) stands to
'I intend to go to London'
analogously to the way in which
'Oh for rain tomorrow!'
[cfr. Optative vs. cohortative, THIS BLOG]
"stands to
'I wish for rain tomorrow'."
Here the closet intentionalist that he was leaves the skeleton behind:
"Just as no one else can say _just_ what I say when I say
'Oh for rain tomorrow',
so
NO ONE ELSE CAN SAY _JUST_ WHAT
I SAY
WHEN
I SAY
'I shall-i go to London'.
-- Viva. Bravo! That's MY Grice!
"If someone _else_ says" (He is skipping ILLEISM, this blog -- for bad measure):
(9) Grice _will_ go to London.
"he will be expressing _his_, not my, intention that I shall go." (Unless you are a closet illeist).
I now think I follow Grice was up to. One couuld think that by saying
(10) Grice _shall_ go to London.
things were solved, but they are _not_. For,
according to Wallis's Rules,
(10) indicates that the _utterer_ is
determined that Grice go to London.
whereas (9) I'm not sure expresses the utterer's intention, but merely the
utterer's _prediction_ that Grice go to London.
Shall we move on?
Etc.
The shall/will distinction is one I observed rigidly in drafting contracts. Because almost all contracts are drawn in the third person, the third person form was most relevant.
ReplyDelete"Whereas, Seller will soon be moving to Florida; and
"Whereas, Buyer will be getting a nice sign-on bonus to dig AIG out of its hole,
"NOW THEREFORE
"Seller shall sell, and Buyer shall buy Blackacre.
"Buyer shall pay Seller way more than Blackacre is worth, using money Seller will borrow from a bank that will sell the loan to some unsuspecting foreigners via a securtization that will bear a high rating from a ratings agency that will be paid by the scam artist selling the securities."
et, as you like to say, cetera.
When contractual obligations were established in letter form, i.e. where the parties were the author and addressee of a letter, first and second person considerations came into play
"I shall be moving to Florida shortly, and, as you will be joining AIG, we have agreed that I will sell you my house, and you shall pay me big bucks for it."
I always tried to invoke rules in my drafting, and it did not matter to me whether they were archaic or in disuse. What mattered to me was that my compliance with them could be demonstrated so that what I wrote would be deciphered in accordance with the rules that I was obviously obeying.
Whenever a dispute arises as to the meaning of a document, most often a contract or a will, one side will usually be seeking a less rigid reading of the words than the other. That side will almost always begin by attacking the draftsman, showing how he did not always mean what he said, that he was sloppy, that nothing can be inferred, for example, from his use of indicative or emphatic mood. The best antidote to that sort of thing is not just to draft carefully, but to draft ostentatiously with respect to as many rules as one can find. I don't claim to have searched out as many rules as there are, but I did studiously observe shall/will as Wallis gives them, and I never split infinitives, and I used "so" rather than "as" in negative comparisons ("not so deep as a well," a rule that someone told me about and I never even bothered to check out, as, bogus or not, it created one more opportunity to show that I had my eye on the ball).
Rule-driven writing, I believe, comes to feel careful even without extended analysis. I can't prove that, but it's just a sense that I have from years of trying to create it and, perhaps even more pertinently, being exposed to it and its opposite.
Indeed. On a similar vein (he is a romantic like me, and we like to show our veins, under the pale moon above), N. E. Allott has recently directed my attention to this
ReplyDeleteOxymoronic Delaware thing:
'the forthright negotiator principle'.
I objected, publicly. Surely Grice is not expecting to draft a contract!
--- His example involves,
"Voila le chien. Il est si beau".
This means, blatantly,
"That's a dog. So cute"
Yet, Grice wants to say that he CAN use it to mean
"Help yourself with a piece of cake"
(WoW:v).
Similarly, he wants to say,
"It's raining"
means
"I want you to bring me a paper by next Friday" (at a tutorial).
The Delaware thing, on the other hand, trades on 'subjective understandings' versus objective understandings, or intersubjective understandings that confuse the pedant Gricean in me. And they don't even care to consider Grice's favourite
unintended misunderstandings of the intersubjective kind meant to be understood wrongly.
Etc.
D. S. M. W. has brought to my attention a book by A. Durant coming out this month. The man teaches at a poly in Mx, but he is very good. And perhaps because he teaches there, mind.
His book is called,
"Television"
or something. He argues that people are so concerned about drafts, etc, that they are starting NOT to mean what they SHOULD be meaning ("That they should not UTTER so often is perhaps a contradiction when it comes to the chattering classes, but that's neither here nor there").
S. Neale, who met Grice while the man was so disappointed with life, and was drilled by D. S. M. W. with things, quotes from
'the use of a firearm'
in his contribution to Perry, which, trust, he'll compile somewhere else killing the effect.
In 'use of a firearm' the idea is that it can neve be MISused apparently.
"This-is-Nick" pointed out to me that this particular case of the 'use of a firearm' is particularly otiose, in being _wrong_ too.
Etc.
Perhaps Jack's Will as he never left it (to Jill) should read, Jack's "Shall".
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm unconvinced by the drop of the 's' in will. All third persons allways have the s associated with them.
But for some reason, while Grice and Prichard still use it when pressed,
I wills my football players to score a lot.
Jack wills that his football players will score a lot.
It's often dropped in conversational, non-archaic English.
Jack will break his crown.
I suppose the silly idea behind this was that
"Jack wills to break his crown"
is Un-contingential. But still... Things people read!
----
The German (or Hun, as my granny prefers) are wittier here:
ReplyDeleteThey use 'sollen' and 'willen'. The latter they use for 'will', proper. As in matters of 'free will'. The sollen they use for legalese. This confused a few little old ladies.
"In the Grosse Garten in Dresden I once came across an old lady, standing,
helpless and bewildered, in the centre of seven tracks. Each was guarded by a
threatening notice, warning everybody off it but the person for whom it was
intended.
“I am sorry to trouble you,” said the old lady, on learning I could speak English and read German, “but would you mind telling me what I am and where I HAVE TO go?”
I inspected her carefully. I came to the conclusion that she was a “grown-up” and a “foot-goer,” and *pointed out* her path. She looked at it, and seemed disappointed. “But I don’t _want_ to go down there,” she said; “*mayn’t* I go this way?” “Great heavens, no, madam!” I
replied.
“That path is reserved for children.” “But I wouldn’t do them any *harm*,” said the old lady, with a smile. She did not look the sort of old lady who would have done them any harm.
“Madam,” I replied, “if it rested with
me, I would trust you down that path, though my own first-born were at the
other end; but I can only INFORM you of the laws of this country."
"For you, a
full-grown woman, to venture down that path is to go to certain fine, if not
imprisonment. There is your path, marked plainly —
Nur für Fussgänger
and if you will follow my advice, you will hasten down it; you are NOT
ALLOWED to stand here and hesitate.”
“It doesn’t lead a bit in the direction I
*want* to go,” said the old lady.
“It leads in the direction you _ought to_ want to go,” I replied, and we parted."
(J. K. Jerome, Three men in a bummel).
JLS
"Love is like the measles. We all have to go through it, but only once" (Jerome, Idle thoughts of an idle fellow").