The March Hare's Metalinguistics

---- by J. L. S.
--------- For the GC

---- HAVING JUST NOTED the subtlety of the OL/ML I will still keep the 'metalinguistic' talk! We are considering:

i. Elsie, Dacie and Trilly drew things. Many things. Each and every of the things they drew (not everthing in the world) began with an M.

----

Alice finds there's something odd about that, and alla Hart ("Causation and the Law") asks:

ii. Why?

i.e. Why beginning with an M?

Her metalinguistic implicature being: "Surely that's odd."

The March Hare replies, as is often the case with conversationalists, at the level of the implicature. The Hare does not seem to regard Alice's query as a genuine query for information. And utters:

iii. Why not?

--- implicating: Surely there is nothing odd or controversial or worth the interruption about the fact that the three little girls were drawing things beginning with an M.

---

The fact that Alice _keeps_ silent or remains silent after the repartee or reposte confirms the Mad Hare's guess.

"Your guess as good as mine" could have been a good one for the Dormouse. The question, "Why?", was explicitly directed to the Dormouse. If the Hare felt like replying on the Dormouse's behalf that speaks wonders for the Hare. Etc.

In asking, "Why?" -- children and philosophers always do -- Alice MAY be being genuinely curious. Curioser and curioser, actually. She did find something odd, and wants to know the _cause_ of it. But the Hare, in rebuking her as she does, is pointing to her that _everything_ in the universe is mystic and mysterious and marvellous and metaphysical and malaprop -- all begining, incidentally, with an M.