The Uninvited Implicature

Mirembe Nantongo, a friend of mine who works for the US government on the Mediterranean, once organised a party. Fancy dress party. We were supposed to be original. Should I say that I win the prize when I arrived all dressed up as

A Conversational Implicature

?

(I was _defeated_ though, at the end of the _night_ -- I _hate_ 'the end of the day', and I'm happy the collocation, for the OED, is 'newish').

Anyway, R. B. Jones, elsewhere, writes:

Trust Speranza will bring Grice to any party you care to invite him.

Tim W. in a post to this blog refers to

'the author -- or co-author with Geiss -- of
"Invited Inferences"' (or words).

Now, is an implicature to be _invited_.

What of 'autists', 'masturbatory types' and relentless literalists as Austin (Grice claimed was) and Grice was?

Surely you shouldn't ALLways invite an 'implicature'.

It's true that 'unintended double-entendre' as G. R. Sampson uses in "Making Sense" (e.g. re: 'gay') is a contradictio in terminis.

But for Grice

U

may be

U on occasion.

I.e. I write an entry to a diary -- or a post to a blog! Just joking! (This blog is someone else's idea!) and your "A" is "U", sometimes. Or at least "U". It seems too reverential, or ambitious, to think, as Grice sometime thinks (WoW:v) that

'there is an addressee OUT THERE'

just that

"there is an inference element that this addressee out there will consider in the protrepsis of the exhibition", etc.

That's for INVITED implicatures.

Grice writes in his much freer, less jargonistic, "Valedictory Essay" -- as he knew, as we all do, that he was going (to buy a farm?) --.

Monologue is free of implication.
Only concerted talk is not.

He is meaning to derogate his own invention -- or English invention, recall Sidonius on 'implicatura' --, but I'm less sure.

First, I'm perhaps more of a behaviourist than Grice was. And while I trust there are things I _know_ about me that don't need to be displayed in _conversation_ with myself, I'm less sure if

when I dream of "&"

-- to use Grice's beloved ampersand, "Presupposition and Conversational Implicature", in Cole, NOT the WoW reprint --

we can dream 'and then' off it!

Etc.