--- By JLS
----- for the GC
--- ACTUALLY IT'S TWO: Taylor and Cameron. As a submittor to a thesis in philosophy for a department of philosophy I had to order so many books! Among them, this rather dreary one by Deborah Cameron (I love her) and Talbot Taylor (I love him). Their book was expensive and slim and it's called, rather unimaginatively (I love them) "Conversation", and it has one chapter, called, unimaginatvely (I love them), "Grice". As I comfily browse it at my Swimming-Pool Library -- it's a hardback so it has a small niche therein, I excerpt some passages for the Club. It occupies, p. 81 to 97 and it has no philosophical reflection to it, but hey.
They introduce the topic or 'brand' "Grice" as follows:
One school [cfr. Esther Williams, "School of sirens". JLS] of thought in pragmatics that has had a strong influence ... is that which has its source in Grice.
--- What do they say regarding Grice himself?
Grice originally presented his theory of ... implicature in the William James lectures... These have never been published in their entirety
They are writing, admittedly, before 1989, when Grice's book was posthumously published.
mimeographed copies of the [thing] have circulated widely.
But Grice never allowed for publication of his unpublications to be misquoted freely. And rightly so.
Cameron and Taylor continue:
Grice begins his discussion
Does he? They have just said that the things were NOT published in their entirety. As the format of the WoW reprint shows, that above is NOT HOW Grice begins his discussion. Rather, he begins his discussion by placing his own self as an A-philosopher. He is concerned with the evolution of his views on meaning [as a methodological concern of philosophical import only, not an empirical-linguistic, less so ethnomethodological one] from "Causal theory of perception" via the lectures at Oxford to the 1967 vintage (meant for Americans). -- Note that Taylor and Cameron are Americans.
by pointing out that conversations are
not made up of a series of disconnected remarks
You see what you mean!? Such deep thought! I mean, you have Grice being quoted (murdered?) by some linguists and philosophy gets the worst press ever. Why aren't philosophers citing linguists in the stead? Grice is not pointing out THAT: Everybody knows that! What he is saying is that his previous views against Wittgenstein's account of 'perception' talk was totally misguided because he (Witters) ignored the OBVIOUS fact that there is a rationale behind the report of perception facts. It was TOO good that Grice cared to leave the "Valedictory Essay" for posterity, but count the linguists quoting from it -- even the relevant section on strand 6 -- seriously enough!
They continue, our Taylor and Cameron:
rather, they are characteristically rational, co-operative events
Let's have a party!
----
[Grice] claims that the participants in
a conversation will recognise a common
purpose or set of purposes
In the future. They will recognise a common purpose in the future!
which may evolve during the conversation and may be more or less definite
As in the talks he had to endure from some of his tutees!
----
This general pricniple of conversational interaction,
helping to organise participants' contributions around
a common purpose, Grice refers to as the
'Co-operative Principle'
But with which he fought for years. Nothing about it in the lectures he had delivered at Oxford one year before. It's all about Candour, Benevolence, Self-Love and stuff. He could change to amuse different audiences. (Recall he was official university or varsity lecturer for Varsity).
Grice goes on to dientify a number of
specific maxims and sub-maxims which
fall under and joinlty make up the
force behind the CP
No reference to the Kant amusing reference ('echoing Kant', Grice says). He is echoing Kant in MORE than the obvious respect of using 'maxim' (a Kantianism) and the FOUR Categories of Understanding for Kant (Quantitas, Qualitas, Relatio, and Modus) --: also in the fact that the CP works as Kant's 'principle of practical reason' that universalises the particular maxims.
Maxims function by constraining
the participants' behaviour so as to make
conversations orderly, purposeful, and
maximally efficient
--- At least they could have provided different adjectives for each category. What about informativeness? Trustworthiness? Clarity? -- each category has a special import.
Grice suggests that there are nine maxims
This is an excellent point! For with the extra one in WoW:P & CI that gives us the "Decalogue"!
--
One good thing that Taylor and Cameron could NOT have possibly misunderstood in Grice is the rationalist motivation:
conversationalists follow the CP and may
justifiably be assumed to follow the CP
ceteris paribus because it conforms to
principles of human rationality
How many times I have witnessed linguists filling their mouths (I love them) with the word 'rationality' but few caring to go in detail in Grice's special book on the topic, "Aspects of Reason". For Grice, rationality is the problem, not the solution!
Cameron and Taylor continue:
Grice and his followers argue that
conversational 'rules' are NOT
arbitrary and are NOT simply the
products of social conventions
This is good, but trust that they want to rush to their comfort zone:
Although Grice's rationalism is clear,
he does not support it at any length
--- Only he dedicates a whole book, five lectures at Stanford ("The Kant Lectures"), six lectures at Oxford ("The Locke Lectures") and zillions of references in "The H. P. Grice Papers" -- at no length, indeed!
Taylor and Cameron leave Kant, Aristotle, Grice and the major philosophers and go on to discuss Leech instead! (I mean, I love him! But what can he SAY about the Philosophical Grounds of Rtionality: Intentions, Categories, Ends?
That is the Griceian chapter finished. And we are on p. 87. The remaining of the chapter entitled Grice is for a discussion of a disparate bunch of authors!
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Their book was expensive and slim and it's called, rather unimaginatively (I love them) "Conversation", and it has one chapter, called, unimaginatvely (I love them), "Grice".
ReplyDeleteWhat could be more Gricean than these one-word titles? Maybe imaginativeness in titling is narcissistic and otiose. The wonder is not that the book is called Conversation but that the name was available! Imagine: in all the writing that has been done about conversation over the centuries, no one has written a book with the simple title Conversation, at least not one important enough to avoid confusion with.
What is the Gricean status of the clever chapter heading? Do we read or not read a chapter based on its name? When I was in the eighth grade, wandering through the public library, for reasons I cannot remember, I picked up a book on alcohol. (There were no alcoholics in my life; I think I was just curious about the stuff.) Anyway, I looked through the table of contents and found a chapter called (unimaginatively) "Sex and Alcohol." (Not, imaginatively, say, "Guns 'n 4 Roses") Naturally, I turned to that chapter, which began:
"Are you reading this chapter first? Don't feel bad. I am writing it first."
Busted! Talk about your seminal moments! Here a total stranger had guessed how I would respond to (unimaginative) chapter headings in his book. I felt so mature. I mean, how did he know I was 14? He had to assume that I was an adult, and here I was acting as adults were predicted to act. Perhaps I had indeed become a (typically predictable) man at my Bar Mitzvah. Who knew? And I owed this epiphany to an author's lack of imagination (that hid, cancellably, a wry sense of humor).
So maybe you're being too hard on these linguists, JL. Is it not fair to answer the question "What does Grice have to say to linguists?" in a way that does not try to answer "What does Grice have to say to philosophers?"
Are you suggesting that all (good) writing about Grice cover the same ground in the same way? That would not necessarily be wrong; Darwinists debate evolutionary necessity constantly. It is often said, disapprovingly, that to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and you do not fall into that trap. Maybe philosophy is the only nail worthy of the Gricean hammer. But I hope not.
For me, a simple reductionist with no preference for any discipline - "undisciplined," you might say - there are precious few hammers and many, many nails, and I cannot stop always to do philosophy before nailing down something else.
Recall Robert Frost's famous essay on the choices we make about misusing our tools:
Whose nails these are I think I know
His workshop's in the village, though
He will not see me stopping here
To ball and peen his cabin so.
Linguistics is all right, you see
But I'm into philosophy
And that's just how it has to be
And that's just how it has to be.
I left out a couple of verses, as I don't remember them exactly and I wouldn't want to misquote.
Your post did introduce the concept of the "pricniple," which I think has vast Carrollian potential. Sounds like a porn title: "The Cooperative Pricniple." But, of course, I wouldn't know about that.
You are right about the prick-niple. When I edit these things it will become a footnote: --.
ReplyDelete"The cooperative principle" ("L. J. Kramer has suggested that this is pornographic (* -- Kramer is relying on the typo, pricniple"))".
I think you are right about "A Linguist Reads Grice". It wasn't MY DAY! Recall I was preparing for the opera, really.
----- I will elaborate on your idea of the hammer and the nail. I think you are right about 'nailing down'. Oddly, Grice speaks of the cooperative pricniple as 'dove-tailing'. And ain't the unequalled charm of dovetailing that one does NOT use a hammer.
I think part of Taylor's problem is that he was educated at WilliamsandMary. This was a famous British monarch (in the words of "1066 and all that").
---- Yes, I don't know. I think it was Chapman who first got me into this pigeon-holing. She entitled her thing, "Grice: philosopher and linguist" only to have in the preface, "Of course Grice would have been offended at being called a linguist" (or words).
Matter of fact, I think Taylor and Cameron are so diverse that they would not consider themselves as linguists, even! (Recall that the author they basically discuss in the chapter is G. N. Leech, who teaches, of all discipline, ENGLISH -- and at LANCASTER, where everybody speaks it already, if with an accent).
I loved your recollections of 'Sex and Alchohol'. Indeed, as Auden said, "The true test of imagination lies in the ability to name a cat". Guns 'n' roses would have been more imaginative, as you write. Oddly, "Tears for Fears" is an IMAGINATIVE name of a Somerset-based pop band (They have a hit, "The seeds of love" which is based on a folksong of the area). They were interviewed about the odd name of the band, "Tears for Fears" and they said that they opened a psychology book on child psychology, and one chapter was entitled, "Tears for fears". The idea, which stuck with them -- they are pretty literate, in parts -- was that a mother has to replace, in the child, a fear for a tear. They should ALLOW the child to cry (i.e. shed a tear) because that's the healthiest way the 'kid' (as they call them in rural Somersetshire) has to cope with pricniples of phobia, and stuff.