Agatha Christie Goes Griceian

--- By JLS
----- for the GC

LEECH/SHORT EXPLICITLY quote from Christie in their summary of Griceian perspectives in novelistic narrative. It's from

Destination unknown

Leech/Short are interested in reported conversations in the novel format. I will simplify the narrative by providing the direct conversation:

WHARTON. How about the wife? You've tried her?

JESSOP. Several times.

WHARTON. Can't she help?

JESSOP. She hasn't so far.

WHARTON. You think she knows something?

----

Leech/Short comment, and they do grant it's a very simple case:

"Jessop's answer to Wharton's question ("You've tried her?") is perfectly straightforward. However, his reponse to the second ("Can't she help?") breask the maxims of quantity and manner (it is quite common for a contribution to a conversation to break more than one maxim at a time)."

--- In fact, my friend Patricia breaks them all all of the times.

----

Leech/Short continues:

"'She hasn't so far' breaks the [super]maxim of Modus [be perspicuous] because if he had the information asked for, "yes" or "no" would have been the shortest and most uncomplicated reply. The maxim of Quantitas is broken because Jessop does not give as full an answer as he might, "She can't help" woul dhave entailed the actual reply, but "She hasn't helped" does not entail "She can't help". One good reason for breaking one of the maxims is to avoid violating one of the others. In this case, Wharton notices Jessop is apparently breaking the cooperative principle and interprets this violation as being necessitated by his not breaking the maxim of Qualitas."

which is a sin for Grice and Henderson ("It's a sin -- to tell -- a lie. Millions of hearts have been broooooken").

Leech/Short continue:

"Jessop is not sure of the answer and therefore cannot truly reply 'yes' or 'no'. Wharton reasonable concludes from his colelague's reply not only taht the woman has not helped so far but also that she MIGHT be of some use in the future."

----- Wharton has written on this, and Wharton 'reads' this from Jessop's shrugging his [i.e. Jessop's] shoulders.

By Wharton (i) I mean Timothy Wharton (this blog), by Wharton (ii) I mean the character of Christie's novel.

For the narrative really goes:

WHARTON. Can't she help?
JESSOP [shrugging his shoulders]. He hasn't so far.

--- Leech/Short comment:

"In real life, the deduction of implicatures
is often aided by the use of kinesic
signals. ... In this case, Christie gives us
the kinestic information in the stage-direction,
'shrugging his shoulders' thus helping us to understand
Jessop's implicature".

Idiot-proof as it were. Fool-proof as someone else may prefer. Oddly, I recently was told by an Anglo-Argentine who is a VERY DEAR friend of mine her torture at Oxford. She was spending some time at Magdalen College as invited by the British ambassador Millington Drake. She was in this party at Magdalen. She has an impeccable English, and the best modals and manners. Yet, a fastidious tutor at Magdalen out of the blue asked her, "You are not English, are you?". "No, I was born in the Argentine". "I knew that." "How?". "We English never shake our shoulders".

---- But Jessop?!? Oddly, this is more like an abduction than a deduction (not of Figaro, though), and it's good that Leech/Short write, "Wharton concludes". I have a friend WHO WILL WRITE, "Wharton implies". He systematically uses 'infers' for 'implies' and vice versa. Since I am a countersuggestible person I never correct him -- he is French, too, which doesn't help. Etc.