The Dictum of the Romans -- and Grice

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

There's something very ENGLISH, and very Germanic, about 'say'. We don't say 'say' in Rome, or they don't say say. They said, 'dictum'. Dicere is 'to say'. At some point, in the Valediction, Grice needs to go Roman.

"dic-", in dicere, or dictum, is cognate with apo-deik-tic. The Greeks did have a share of this root, 'dic-tum', and used it in things like 'in-dec-s' (index) or 'deik-sis'. As when we say "this or that" (by pointing with the non-middle finger).

Why? Well, because to 'say' is to ostensively show. A bandaged-leg player of squash does not NEED to 'go' (or 'say'), "Hey, idiot, can't you see my leg is bandaged? Not for nothing I'm wearing shorts". He will just DISPLAY the bandaged leg.

Grice has it in "Valediction":

Perhaps the 'centre' versus the 'periphery' has to deal with a prohibition to "HINT". Central cases of signification will be those

"in which what is signified either is,
or forms part of, or is
specially and appropriately
connected with what the
signifying expression (or its user)"

---- good ol' utterer

"SAYS [wicked emphasis -- Grice's] as
distinct from ['implicates']. WoW:360.

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Here Grice actually has passed his own jargon, and uses

"as distinct from:

i. implies,
ii. suggests,
iii. hints,
iv. "or in some other less than fully direct manner 'conveys'"

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"Conveys" is a genial word. It relates to '-play' as in "Dis-play". There's "Imply" which is a variant of "implay", and exply, as in "ex-pli-cate". The OED has an entry under -ure, for 'plicature'. For we need a word to do 'general' duty for both aspects of signification, even if we are going to derogate the one as i and the other as first-rate ii.

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Grice goes on to say that one might 'summarily express' this suggestion as being that:

"special centrality attaches to
those instances of signification
in which what is signified
is or is part of the
'dictive' [scare quotes, Grice's]
content of the signifying expression."