Gesture: Entailment versus Implicature

Kramer:

"[H]w can you say she's a well-known lesbian if you don't allow folks to say that they know she's a lesbian?"

What I wrote in "The Day After Yesterday" was:

"A woman is not Gricean. A man is
Gricean. Or male. Hence, in a
way, homosexuality. By becoming
homosexuals, some males 'pick on'
certain features of femeinity --
in their speech, etc. Vide the
video referred to by J. Kennedy
elsewhere, of Judith Butler, a
well-known lesbian,
caricaturing a homosexual male!"

--- which I thought was funny-peculiar rather than funny-haha in the circumstances. Judith Butler is referring to the assaassination of this boy (or male) in Maine, by straights (so-called). Apparently, he was doing the 'gay walk'. And Butler is very much a performer there. For she imitates the walk, and looks down on the 'femenine' features of the 'boy'''s walk. "There must have been something VERY HORRID in this walk, if it moved those 'straights' to murder the boy."

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So, I was thinking...

A gay male can be so effeminate in his ways that he will invite his own death -- in Maine.

A professor can PARODY those ways and get a high-rating youtube.

Or something.

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In "Grice", Chapman quotes from some unquoted Grice: (words)

"Sure, I have been no foe to the idea
that an entailment is not an implicatum,
but I don't think the distinction holds in
THIS case."

It's the familiar case of

"I intend to do it but I think I may not".

As D. F. Pears notes, if the Utterer has some evidence to think that the probability of the outcome is a mere possibility, rather than a probability (I use probability for > 0.5, and possibility for < 0.5) then you would NOT say 'intend'.

But Grice objects and thinks that 'intend' ENTAILS belief, rather than 'implicates' it.

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Now, when it comes to gestures, it is all the more tricky.

Imagine Butler displayin the gesture of a gay homosexual. If one knows Butler is tolerant of homosexuals, one can DIGEST that. The 'implicature' is other if one knows Butler to be a bigot! (I don't think she is!). It's still different to check what a gesture may _entail_.

I'm never too happy with 'entail' but I do think that it connects with the horseshoe.

If p --> q

Strictly:

p ⊃ p

So, e.g.

He is a bachelor ⊃ He is an unmarried male

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"unmarried male" is, in some accounts, what 'bachelor' means. This is a meaning postulate. Carnap prefers the negative version. Let "B" be bachelor and "M" married. Carnap writes

(x)Bx ⊃ ~Mx

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We were discussing with Kramer the use of 'imply', 'suggest', etc. when it comes to mere gestures. I would think that it is a bit otiose to distinguish bewteen an 'implicature' of a gesture, versus an 'entailment' of a gesture. But I can elaborate further.

I would say that to move the head sideways is a gesture for 'no'.

So, a lesbian asked a straight female:

Voulez vous coucher avec moi?

The answer is a sideways movement by which the straight female, we assume, wants to express the proposition:

"No, I don't want to 'sleep' with you".

At this level, it's hard to see how she can CANCEL the sign -- e.g. if she is being ironic.

So, I would think that

sideways movement of head ⊃ "no"

rather than the weaker

sideways movement of head +> "no" (where "+>" signifies 'implies').

But at the level of gestures I think the main symbol is something like (M), i.e. plain 'mean' -- which Grice says MUST be done 'duty' by imply:

sideways movement of head (M) "no".

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This conforms with common sense. While words do have compositional semantics -- some of them: eg.

"I didn't know she was a lesbian"

"You still don't"

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LESBIAN: +FEMALE & FEMALE-LOVING

'You still don't" may ambiguous in scope -- cfr. Harnish, "I didn't know she had an abortion").

U may be contradicting the belief that 'she' likes females. But he may just as well be contradicting the belief that 'she' is a female in the first place.

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(This, alas, seems to be one fear by some lesbians -- vide the google hit where I quote from Butler, "I became a lesbian" -- where another hit goes, "'Butler' plays the lesbian game, ... because there is the connotation that a lesbian is not a woman'".)

Butler has a wonderful sense of humour, and I praise it for it. She is also very 'clever', as the French say. As she likes to say,

(from memory)

"This woman at one of my talks, said that she had survived lesbian feminism and still loved women. I thought that was pretty funny.' The funny-p thing is that the sound that funny-h!

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Butler has also said, -- from memory -- "I sound like an old person. I still identify myself as a lesbian".

She is referring to the queer-theorists, the queer simpliciter, the queers, and the rest of them -- including clever, perceptive straights! Or not!