Agatha Christie Does It Again

--- I.e. she quotes Grice again, sort of.

---- by JLS
------ for the GC.

LEECH/SHORT, not happy with quoting from this cheap authoress (I mean, there ARE ZILLIONS OF sublime authors of English lit. and THEY have to quote from this lady?), the lovable Christie. "Later in "Destination Unknown"" -- hardly your Nobel Prize winner, Christie writes:

J#SSOP. Now, he is supposed to be a cousin,
--- by marriage, of Tom Betterton.
HILLARY CRAVEN. Supposed?
JESSOP. Let us say, more correctly, that if HE is
who he says he is, he is a cousin of the late
Mrs. Betterton.

-----

This reminds me of Lauri Carlson. I ordered his expensive book from Holland, only to find that all his corpus is novels by Agatha Christie. Ah well, at least this blog is for free.

Leech/Short comment:

"Again, in order to avoid breaking the
maxim of quality, by saying 'he is a cousin by
marriage of Tom Betterton', which he suspects
is false, Jessop uses a more complex
and less definite locution. Hillary Craven echoes
the added part of the sentence in order to
indicate that she has understood the implicature,
and to ask for further clarification."

-----

Since they have to FILL pages (this is a commissioned book) Leech (the brilliant Griceain) and Short go on to analyse "Supposed?" alla Grice ("Surely there is notreason to suppose that Miss Craven has NOT HEARD the sentence correctly. Hence we, like Jessop, treat the echo question as a request for more explicit information."

Etc.