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Thursday, March 11, 2010

Moves and Turns

--- by J. L. Speranza
-------- dedicated to Jason Kennedy
------------- for the Grice Club

---- IN HIS FUNNY POST, "An exceptional case", Jason Kennedy reports from

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRva7z8pvwc&feature=related

A high-powered criminal asking the question *of* a policeman. The criminal is expecting his girlfriend, finds a policeman instead:

C: Who are you and what are you doing here?
P: I'm a locksmith and I'm a locksmith.

Kennedy sheds some interesting light on this. I will address here ch. ii of my PhD. When I was making the syllabus for my Thesis, I had read Grice 1975 basically and HE DOES speak of "conversational move", "conversational rule", "conversational game", etc. So I thought! Good! My thesis. So I entitled each chapter -- I'm going to pdf it soon I hope and post it -- somewhere --, alla:

Ch. ii -- Conversational Moves
Ch. iii. -- Conversational Goals

---

Ch. iv -- Conversational Strategies
Ch. vii -- Plus-sum game, etc.

----

I had to find justification for the "move" thing. This was a, sort of, strict thing presented or going to be presented, and deposited, as it is, in a 'serious' PHILOSOPHY dept, -- and I was going to be asked a serious public defence in front of a jury of philosophers -- as I was -- to be awarded the "PhD" -- i.e. my deeming as a 'doctor', etc.

--- And there was I playing with moves!

--- So I could consult non-philosophers, like I did, Marion Owen -- but NEVER DISPLAY the fact, because if they (the jury) knew that I was a closet 'something-else' (say, ethnomethodologist) I would have been looked down.

--- Marion Owen, in a seldom cited piece -- she is from England -- repr. in Werth (another English person), "Discourse", Croom Helm, concentrates on the 'move' as a UNIT.

Since I had already elaborated on 'unit' in a seminar on phenomenology and the social sciences -- where we had discussed Schuetz, I knew what I was talking about or how to impress the jury.

Plus, I was always fascinated by AUSTIN, and I did want to elaborate on the Grice/Austin interface. Eventually, the PhD does feature the name Grice, but of course fails to mention Austin. You CAN'T and you WON'T have everything -- the big problem with theses -- by immature writers, and such. Their reading is so dreary and explanatory it hurts anyone INCLUDING the thesis advisor.

Austin I saw as providing then a notion of an ACT, the act of UTTERING, in Grice's parlance. But what kind of ACT is that? Phonic, physically interpretable, physically describable, or what? I concluded -- for that chapter -- (You see, you have to conclude for EACH chapter, making the thing a dreary thing -- and trust the Intro and the Conclusion just repeats the stuff) -- that it was "intentionally describable" -- and I decided to follow Grice (but indeed Marion Owen) in calling this thing a "move" -- i.e. any vehicle of Meaning-NN.

I then proposed a simple formulation, m and t, which I now see is one followed by Grice in archival material when he speaks of the high degree of abstraction of his frictionless solids -- where a conversation is seen as an exchange alla

A: m1
B: m2

So you see where I'm getting. It's move-making: a FUNCTIONAL THING. But there's TURN-taking, a structural thing. As studied by Schegloff, et al. In the case of

C: Who are you and how did you get in?
B: I'm a locksmith and I'm a locksmith.

the formalisation would be:

A: m1 & m2
B: m3 & m4

-- i.e. in a very simple way of seeing things, A means TWO THINGS, and makes TWO moves in the same TURN. His big mistake. No wonder he gets all irritated, as he should (perhaps he don't [sic]) when he gets "m3 & m4" which as Kennedy notes, flouts 'be brief' 'm3' and 'm4' ("I'm a locksmith") being basically tokens of the same type, as a counter-turn, if not counter-move.

m3 answers m1 and m4 answers m2. In general, it's best to see conversation then as a game where ONE MOVE per turn should be allowed. Thus Grice:

It's the simplified methodology that Grice institutes against Austin, as per Grice's attack against Austin. As Chapman notes:

"The call for system and order ... is Grice's own [not Austin's]. He argues in these lectures" -- archival material --

"that [this is our] thinking about conversation." "[Grice's] method of limiting his hand ['as few cards on the table as we can' as Grice has it]". And he limits his hand" [results] "in acertain HIGHLY artificial simplifications", as Chapman, not a philosopher, sees them. I have read philosophers compared to whom Grice is the least artificial, least simplified, of fellows or chaps. "Grice makes", Chapman adds, "these simplifcations deliberately and knowingly" (emphasis mine. JLS -- so don't expect criticism of an unwanted nature!). The 'context' is limited to the 'environment' in chains of previous 'moves' -- the 'conversation' so far -- or ex post facto, if we study it as an object. And conversation will be assumed to take place between TWO conversationalists only who ALTERNATE [turns in the making of moves] and "to be concerned," Chapman has it, "simply with the business of" not being monkey, i.e. goal-directed moves.

If we see the methodology we understand something like:

A: Have a piece of cake.
B: Thank you. ... Puaj. Lemon pie? I thought you said 'cake'.
A: Sorry about that.
B: Do you have apple cake instead, please?

----

where 'thank you' and 'please' are good oilings in the making of the moves. Oddly that above contains more than a move per turn. But hey ... we can cope. Etc.

16 comments:

  1. This brings back the memories of teaching Taiwanese managers the art of conversation.

    I used the idea of a turn, and coupled it with a study of phatic communication, so they would get the idea that you could see when a subject had been exhausted or further detail was seen as an intrusion by the other party, by listening for "Anyway" and "Right..." etc

    "These are cues to make a new move..."

    Didn't always work, though. Couple of funnies here, from real conversations I had.

    Yang (out of nowhere) - Do you speak Japanese?
    Me - No, do you?
    Yang - No

    I also taught a group of Guatemalan kids, and they had a list of sample English questions. One kid asked me if I had a dog, and I said yes, the next kid asked me what colour it was, I said black. The next kid asked me its name, and I said Coqueta. The last kid looked at me and said -

    "Do you collect stamps?"

    ReplyDelete
  2. Right. "By the way" I never understood. They say,

    m: By the way, do you collect stamps?

    is more appropriate, but it doesn't sound so to me. After all, whatever the way is, 'by' it is "tangential" or 'divergent', so why bother to mark it. Shouldn't one find out by oneself?

    ----

    If the conversation had been conducted in English, what strikes me, wouldn't Coqueta by the name of a _bitch_. Just kidding. In languages that do mark the gender:

    'perro', 'perra'.

    "Mi perro es Coqueta" sounds queer (in more than one way).

    The fact that 'coquet-a', also has the extra-meaning, "Coquettish" works against the idea of a male hound being one such.

    Ah well.

    We had a cat we called Moses, since we saved it from the storm (and that's what Moses means in Hebrew -- my mother's idea). When she (the cat) got pregnant, we re-bapbtised her "Mosesa".

    ---

    Yes, "Do you speak the lingo?" should be number 45 regardless.

    --- Note that "killing two by the same stone" also explains the oddity of your:

    I'm a locksmith and I'm a locksmith

    -- as an answer from criminal to cop, "Who are you and how did you get in?"

    --- The same move, m3, "I am a locksmith" could have been seen as an answer to both. You do say that the repetition is efficient on basis that the utterer could have found the door open. Yet, consider:

    "Did you miss Agatha? Did you miss Peter?"
    (example by Leech, Principles of Pragmatcs)

    Answer: I missed Peter.

    Here the structure being

    m1 m2
    m3

    where m3 answers m2 -- from which A, as the conversation proceeds, via 'suggestio falsi', should interpret, as he proceeds to build a 'slate' of all the doxastic and boulomaic states for his co-conversationalists, that the maker of m3 regards that m1 gets a negative answer. Problem here is that's a conversational implicatum, only. Etc.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Coqueta *is* something of a bitch. This black ball of fuzz regularly attempts to catapult me to my mortal death by spreading herself across the top of the stairs like a canine tripwire.

    Also, "By the by..." which is perhaps confined to English people of a certain generation.

    "Oh, by the way, there's a tarantula on your leg..."

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yes, it's fascinating. Discourse markers, and such. Where would we be without them.

    "By the by" is a good one.

    "Incidentally", I turn to use as "by the way", but people don't get it.

    A: I have a dog.
    B: Incidentally, do you collect stamps, as well?

    ----

    There's, "if I may ask you". But this is a sort of 'biscuit-conditional', since it's used AFTER the thing has been asked. It's a sort of Post-request, and thus otiose.

    I recall a friend, Eric Yost, actually, who would often challenge an "ITM lady", in New York. A beggar of sorts who would stop him almost every day, "Can I ask you a question?". He submitted that that is a Moore type pragmatic contradiction. I justified the lady by saying what she means is "Can I ask you another question, i.e. a question OTHER than this one?". He said he Knew that.

    The problem is more pressing with pre-invites I find.

    A: Are you free on Saturday night?
    B: Why?
    A: There's "Alice in Wonderland" showing.
    B: Bugger off.

    --- Strictly, an invite is a delicate thing, because, "There's Alice in Wonderland showing is still NOT the invite. But it seems actual moves which ELICIT the invitation are seldom uttered or made.

    Austin focused on very basic moves:

    "Yes, I do" -- I accept Mr. Smith as my man.

    He was very disappointed when he was pointed out that a bride NEVER needs to say that -- in any kind of rite. He was misemembering things.

    On the other hand, I think he was told that "I divorce thee" IS a performative.

    Etc.

    ReplyDelete
  5. A: Are you free on Saturday night?
    B: Only for sex.

    ReplyDelete
  6. A: I have a dog.
    B: Incidentally, do you collect stamps, as well?
    A: No.
    B: And your dog, does your dog collect stamps?
    A: No.
    B: You have that much in common.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Yes, there's always need to find what Grice, otiosely, called "common ground": it's never common and it's never ground.

    Morgan called it 'conversational pool': 'we or you, or they have THAT much in common', etc.

    ----

    Exactly. "Free on Saturday night" is perhaps deictically ambiguous. Austin's colleague, Isaiah Berlin, used to say that there are two totally incompatible 'implicata' of 'free': 'free to' and 'free from'. While the question is ambiguous ('free on Saturday night?') the answer seems to be less so. But cfr.

    A: Do you come here often?
    B: Only in the mating season.

    ReplyDelete
  8. A: Are you free on Saturday night?
    B: No, it's 100 pesos an hour and no kissing, like any other night.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Exactly, or as they used to sing back in 1913 (it's NOT a war song!)

    KID: And I say I wouldn't do it,
    but you went and made me love you so I did.

    GIRL: And on Saturday I'm willing
    ----- If you only take the shilling.
    ----- To make a man of anyone of you.

    She _is_ a bitch because while she explicitly says that the shilling is the payment a conscript would get, how cum she was always _ready_?

    The implicatures of 'sex' are fascinating. Etc.

    ReplyDelete
  10. The implicatures of 'sex' are fascinating by reflexive or subjective/doxastic boulomania!

    12.888nth
    I booked into a hotel and said to the receptionist, 'I hope the porn channel
    in
    my room is disabled.'
    'No,' she says, 'it's regular porn, you sick bastard.'

    ReplyDelete
  11. I woke up once and found the landlady of the guesthouse (the improbably named 'Cleopatra') walking across my room.

    She looked at me, said, "Curtains" and walked out.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Call me naive, or it's late, but I don't get Jason's. I do get Cargan's. And it's good. It's a sort of the conversational implicatum of the 'have been':

    "I hope the channel in my room has been disabled" would have avoided the misunderstanding, but then no joke, etc.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Well, JLS, it's not a joke. It happened in Hastings.

    I take it she meant she was drawing the curtains or some such, but the idea that this single word was sufficient explanation of why she deemed it a necessity to unlock my door and go about her business while I lay sleeping, well, there's being brief and there's being brief!

    ReplyDelete
  14. I see. It must be Sussex dialect. Recall landladies of guesthouses (especially Hastings) think they OWN the place. I was thinking she had performed some sort of act and was referring to you that the show was over and that curtain-down routine was in order. Ah well.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Yes, I think the ownership point is critical and that, finally, any objections I raised could be countered with :

    "Well, you are just a GUEST!"

    Although, equally, she could scream,

    "What do you think this is, a hotel?"

    ReplyDelete
  16. Indeed. Guesthouse _is_ a euphemism. Oddly, in the vernacular, the word for 'guest' is such a mouthful -- it's a derivation of a Greek and Latin word. From wiki

    Amphitryon (Greek: Ἀμφιτρύων, usually interpreted as "harassing either side"), in Greek mythology, was a son of Alcaeus, king of Tiryns in Argolis.

    Oddly, hostel and hotel seem to derive from the same word, with hostel being the oldest. Mostel must be an older for motel, then, I expect.

    ReplyDelete