"Well" Done Grice

----- J. L. S.


KRAMER, in comment to 'In defence of particularised' recounts a lovely passage from White's Charlotte's Webb and writes:

"If my wife were to ask me whether someone is "a true friend." I might say, "well, he's a good writer," meaning "he's not a true friend". Because, between my wife and me, the question would invoke the general (by my usage) rule [of this White item]."

What a beautiful example!

A: Is he a true friend?
B: He is a good writer.

A: Is he a good writer?
B: He is a true friend.

--- "Well"-done versions

A: "Well, he is a good writer"

A: "Well, he is a true friend"

The 'well' seems utterly otiose in that scenario. People do use 'well' but one wonders. It's loverly to utter otiosities, but recall --

"What is not worth saying, it's not worth putting in symbols"

Oops. The other way round,

"If you can't put it in symbols, it's not worth saying"

I _love_ 'well', but it features seldom in the writings by Darwin, so one wonders:

"Well, the descent of man is an ape".

Etc. I suppose 'well' is such a conversational trick that Grice WILL have a say on the matter.

His first example of implicature (in the published "Logic and Conversation"). As I have unburied elsewhere (apres Chapman no doubt, he dwelt on them as early as 1964, and called them thus -- implicatures -- in full blown. Yet to be recognised by the OED3, if at all.

How is Smith getting on in his new job in the bank.
He hasn't been to prison yet.

Logical form:

NOT ((SMITH, PRISON) GO)

-- No place for the 'well'. But it's the 'well' he does care to hand-write in his notes:

He actually provides a full prefaces to the implicature-triggerer:

"Oh, quite well, I think: he likes
his colleagues, and he hasn't
been to prison, yet." (WoW:24)

True, this is a truth-conditional 'well': it means, he is getting on well. But I can imagine:

Well, he hasn't been to prison yet.

----

Why does 'well' trigger an implicature? What is the logical form of 'well'.

To ask for the _meaning_ of 'well' seems otiose. It is an adverb meaning, 'good'. As in

How are you?
Well, good.

---

It's a sentential modifier of the type that both Kramer and I adore:

Welly well, well done, Grice.

So the modification is a nod on the wellness of the whole utterance:

"Well, he is a true friend"

I.e.

GOODNESS (x = utterance: SMITH (FRIEND, TRUE) IZZ)).

On the other hand, there is like the ironism. An ironism is not an irony, it's an item-that-carries-an-irony. Perhaps things are NOT that 'well' that's why we care to say 'well'

--- In this respect, it compares to

"He could care less"

As I read from an online source

http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2007/06/meet_the_new_cl.html

"I don't know if "I could care less" [or 'well'. JLS]
represents a change of meaning since I doubt
it was ever used to indicate anything than what
it now means, namely that I don't care [or that the
thing I'm uttering is not as well as it should be. JLS].
I suspect this is actual a nasty case of
what Philosophers call conversational implicature.
On this view, due to H. P. Grice, what a sentence
means is often straightforward, but what the
sentence gets across also may include some
additional implication. In general the
implication is drawn from the fact that the
person thought it was cooperative to give
the information. So in this case the idea
would be that while one is saying that
one could care less, one is implying that
this is something that needs saying because
were it not said people would naturally
assume this not to be the case. So "I
could care less" [ or "Well, p". JLS] carries
with it an implicature that it might be hard
to think of how I could care less [or how things
could be improved. JLS]"

Alas the Chicago-Tribune correspondent received a pretty rough handling by another one:

"Nonsense. "I could care less" is simply a
misstatement, a soleciem, or, if you want
to be charitable, a shortened or elided form
for euphonic, prosodic reasons, of the expression
"I couldn't care less" and not some ironic
understatement or whatever you're implying Grice
is. Stop someone who says "I could care less"
[or "Well, pee" JLS] sometime and ask them,
"Wait, don't you mean you could NOT care less."
[or "Wait, can't you wait?"]. And that person
will say, "Well, yes, that's what I mean."
[Or "Well, well, pee". JLS]. But that person
could make the argument, as I would in spoken
language, certainly, that the meaning of
"I could care less" [or "Well, pee"] is clear
to the point of the expression being correct.
In written language I don't think so. Or
"not so much."

Which in a way proves my point that Marx hardly used in the Kapital, or Kant in his Prolegomenon to a Theory of Morals. Etc.

Ah well, as they say.