Branwell Brunty Does Grice

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

--- AT LONG LAST LEECH/SHORT manage to quote from a quotable author: Brunty, Branwell. HE is the author of "Wuthering Heights". Leech and Short cite from Ch. 17:

NELLY DEAN. Hush! Hush! Heathcliff IS a human being. Be more charitable: there are worse men than he is yet!

ISABELLA. He's NOT a human being. And he has no claim on my charity. I gave him my heart, and he took and pinched it to death, and flung it back to me.

--

LEECH AND SHORT (and I quote this to please or amuse or something Kennedy!):

"When Nelly calls Heathcliff 'a human being', she breaks the maxim of Quantitas by stating what is self-evidently true and therefore redundant. The implicature made apparent by twhat follows, is that he DESERVES to be treated with the sympathy and consideration that human beings usually afford to each other."

Except when you are a darky from nowhere as this Yorkshireman savage is! Did you see Olivier in the film version?! A veritable monster!

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Leech/Short continue:

"Isabella, on her part, breaks the maxim of Qualitas a number of times by uttering what is literally untrue, to wit: that Heathcliff is NOT a human being, and that he has torn out her heart and killed it. It is through the implicative force of metaphor and hyperbole"

--- this is all before loose talk on loose talk!

"that Isabella indicates the extent of her ill-treatment by her hubby and the depth of her resentment towards him."

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Brunty! Where did he get all his chauvinism sexism from?