"Romeo champions cause of childhood cancer in big way": Gricean charity

From Quinion's World Wide Words:

""Don't let your children get anywhere near these Romeo champions,"
Ken Afton warns us. He was responding to another headline, this
time in the Romeo Observer of Michigan: "Romeo champions cause of
childhood cancer in big way.""

---

The problem here is ubiquitous: Charity.

Ken Afton, as most of the correspondents to Quinion, are witty.

U: Romeo champions cause of childhood cancer in big way.

---

Afton understands the thing alright. Yet, he manages to create a context out of which his conversatonal reply:

U2: Don't let your children get anywhere near these Romeo champions.

The rationale:

--- Whatever.

What was the problem here?

--- When you encounter a conversational move that infringes a Griceist maxim, elaborate onto the context that makes the move appropriate by other lights, even if it violates the intention of the utterer.

Gricean and non-Gricean:

-- This is non-Gricean in that it ascribes to the U the wrong intention:

--- that there is a Romeon champion, and a number of them.
--- That they are the cause of cancer in childhood (in a big way).

What is Gricean?

The charitable attitude. Holdcroft has examined this: "Charity and Principles of Conversation" in Bouveresse/Parret. The idea is that charity begins at home. Etc.

--- Note that Afton's intention is to draw the attention to the clumsy grammar, rather:

-= Romeo champions cause of childhood cancer in big way.

"cause" -- Greek 'aitia'. How clumsy can a phrase be?

This in a way is clumsiness with a big C, as per the other quote in World Wide Words

"Sometimes a writer's professional vocabulary can appear where it's
inappropriate. Teresa Goodell found this in some meeting minutes at
the school of nursing where she works: "Students will communicate
relevant committee actions to other students and act as lesions
between the faculty and student body.""

--- Here charity is superficial: 'lesion'.

In the case of the 'cause of cancer' is semantic, rather than merely surface or syntactic, etc. Yet, it is NOT that 'cause' has DIFFERENT 'senses': as 'cause of cancer' and 'cause of childhood cancer'. It means the SAME in both collocations. It is the paraphrases which are different:

'cause of childhood cancer' --- should better read: 'cause AGAINST childhood cancer'? Or cause PROMOTING the welfare of children suffering from cancer?

In any case, to advice parents to keep their children away from Romeo champions may turn to be otiose, under the circumstances. Or not. (To use the Kramerianism).