Lawrence J. Kramer, for the Grice Club
You’re not laughing at 37? Well, maybe I told it wrong.
I see Good morning as one of those prison jokes, identified by two words instead of by a number. It’s a pre-packaged collection of thoughts appropriate for certain people to communicate to other certain people under certain circumstances. I think the semantic load of the words is wholly vestigial. The words have more of a mnemonic role than a semantic one.
The extent to which a word or expression has become merely a mnemonic for a set of conventionally understood messages probably varies over its history. But, if an expression can function like the number of a joke, so can aspects of it, e.g., what I call “diction,” the attitudinal aspects of choosing among synonymous expressions. (“Because” vs. “Just because.”) One could answer “Why ‘m’?” with “No reason–1” (equivalent to “Just because”) or “No reason – 10” (equivalent to “fuck off.”) There would then be jokes like
Q. Where did you get that black eye?
A. I asked the boss why I had to work late.
Q. So? What did he say?
a. “No reason-11”
Thus, I don’t believe that Good morning means “I wish that you have a good morning” any more than it means all those interpersonal cues that saying it delivers. Good morning means a lot of things all at once, none of them may be as precise as we might like. For example, most utterers of Good morning do not know whether they intend that the morning be judged good by A’s or U’s lights. I do hope that most people’s mornings be judged good by their lights, but, failing that, by my lights will do. (“I’m sorry you’re disappointed by only making $4 million this morning. Sounds like a good morning to me.”) I’d be happier if A judged the morning to be as good as I judge it to be, but I’m happy enough that the morning was as good as I judge it to be. But I have none of this in mind when I invoke the Good morning package; I need only know it’s good manners toward someone toward whom I choose to exhibit them.
Expressions like Aloha and Shalom (as opposed to the words themselves) seem to have the flexibility to mean “I exhibit toward you good manners under the circumstances.” They might as well be numbers.
48!
Damn. Tough room.
Posts
Kramer sees "Good morning" as
ReplyDeletea pre-packaged collection of thoughts appropriate for certain people ... semantic load of the words is wholly vestigial. The words have more of a mnemonic role than a semantic one
Oddly, I was thinking that in some idiolects of South America, and maybe Europe (descendants of Latin), they have to pluralise. Not the 'morning', but the 'day' ("BuenNOS DiaS"), the afternoon ("BuenAS tardeS") and the night ("BuenAS nocheS"). I suppose the reason may be more euphonic than semantic.
He further refers to:
a set of conventionally understood messages.
This strikes me as "phatic". Oddly, my friend T. Fjeld goes by 'phatic', but the word was possibly invented by Malinowski and became famous when repr. in Ogden/Richards, Meaning of Meaning. Some hold that the origin and evolution on language depends on this 'grooming' -- cfr. the etymology of 'godsip'.
He then proposes a dialogue:
A: Where did you get that black eye?
B: I asked the boss why I had to work late
(implicating, "And got that as a reply), and making any continuation facetious.
I don’t believe that Good morning means “I wish that you have a good morning” any more than it means all those interpersonal cues that saying it delivers.
-- Recall that in the Gricean exercise, though, one is supposed to look for necessary and sufficient conditions that 'analyse' the act of uttering. The question for the Gricean: what belief/desire did the utterer intend to instill in the addressee. It's best to look for a 'that'-clause, if only to provide further implicata. At this point, Grice WOULD appeal to the 'procedure' in one's repertoire. Any 'variant' from the convention, -- to mean "Good morning" to mean, "I love you", would have to be _explained_.
In a slightly different manner of speaking, he would say that "optimally", "good morning" is the WAY to express, "I wish you a good morning." Any implicatum the expression may have gathered (e.g. "I am being polite with the pleasantry") would have to _follow_ from the 'sense' if sense it has. Plus it's best to regard "Good morning" -- in the complex, "I wish you have a good morning" as the ONE and ONLY sense -- do not multiply senses beyond necessity.
Re: the protreptic or exhibitive deictic, "morning" -- good to "U" (exhibitive) or good to "A" -- protreptic, Kramer notes:
I’d be happier if A judged the morning to be as good as I judge it to be.
They might as well be numbers
And oddly, they say A LOT. There's a lot of controversy as to the origin of "Hullo", for example. Apparently, it was first used to _Horses_, who hardly can be receptacles of utterer's meaning. The way it got shortened to "Hi" confuses me.
Also the answer to "How are you?" "Good." A lot of these routines may indicate socio-lectal considerations. Or something.
What fascinated Sacks, before he was run over by a car, was this. I once contacted Schegloff, his executor, to the effect if he had used Grice's mimeos. "He had them, but I don't think he read them", he told me! (I must have his letter somewhere!). Actually, it went softer, "But he was well aware of at least lecture ii". Gail Jefferson said something along the lines.
CA -- conversation analysis is a fascinating area of which few philosophers have anything interesting to say (except _I_, of course, ha!). Jeff Coulter seems to be the best, although not strictly "CA" but more of an ethnomethodologist. What fascinated me about CA in next post. Right now.
48!
Damn. Tough room.
Right now, then --
ReplyDeleteIt's the pre-sequencing. Grice DOES speak of 'dove-tailing' which I think is a beautiful carpenter's metaphor. I could never cut a dove tail, even if they paid me for it. So I don't know where Grice LEARNED those things.
The idea is in pre-requests. John Searle, whom I met in Buenos Aires lecturing on "How Performatives Work" was Gricean all over the place. I discussed with him afterwards. In fact, we had already corresponded via mail, and he had let me have his mimeo on "Conversation" that he later published. At one time, I did think a Searlean-cum-Grice approach to conversation could do, but Searle and I became increasingly 'intentionalists' and against any type of 'sequencing' modeled along any type of 'rule'. But in any case, his infamous case for fame, for many, is having JUST suggested,
"Can you pass me the salt?"
as analyed via Gricean lines (repr. in "Expressoin and Meaning") -- Searle was Strawson's student at Oxford back in the late 50s. He dedicated his contribution to the Grice festschrift, "To Mr. Hope, in memory of Mr. Grace", or something.
-- "Can you pass me the salt?" should best be understood as "Can you pass me the saltER?" I find. But his point is really what later transpired as 'conversational postulate' for Lakoff/Gordon.
We need to know first if A is _able_ to pass the salt. What's the good if he can't or may not?
So "Can you pass me the salt?" is conventional a pre-request, with request deleted ("OK, so pass it to me then"). The A just targets the implicatum, not the denotatum.
----
A conversation needs to have:
beginning
middle-section
end
-- How do conversationalists reach the 'exit'. This is VERY complex, and Schegloff has analysed it, to simplify things, on the telephone line (without eye contact to get the floor).
Middle sections are full of pre-sequencing: pre-requests, and pre-performative in general.
And back to 'good morning', there seems to be a need to get the thing "started". You'll say that if you are entering a building, as a morning routine, you are expecting the person there to _say_ "Good morning, sir", when ANY expansion for conversation would be inappropriate -- but hey, you can't have everything.
So I would regard them as 'warming ups'. The typical scenario is two Englishmen in a train carriage -- talking about the weather. Never exchanging 'good morning'. In monetary transactions (buying and selling) some sort of "Hi" SEEMS necessary -- but not with retailers. Just joking.
What I WOULD wish is that they said, "Zero", to mean, "Can I help you?". Just joking, I love them.
I propose "33" for the bartender after serving you, meaning "Enjoy!".
And there may be others. Etc.