Grice Disliked The "Explict"

--- by J. L. Speranza
------- for the Grice Club.

Roger Bishop Jones, "Strand 5", THIS BLOG, makes a beautiful comment:

"I would also be
inclined to characterise the distinction as connected with
the difference between what is asserted, which I might also
call the (explicit?) content, and the significance of its
being asserted in the way it was in those particular
circumstances."

I must confess I liked (why would I not?) your parenthetical
"(explicit?)".

You are right that 'explicit' usually goes without saying. Ironic that, right?

Grice never liked 'explicit'.

I suppose he would think it would have minimised his 'implicature'.

You see,

'im-plico'

was the Latin word.

There was, of course,

'ex-plico'.

For every "in-", there is an "out-" in Roman times.

---

One would hope that there was a mere

"plico"

and there was. It survives in present Italian when we fold the sails of a boat, say.

So, it's all a spatial metaphor, and not to be taken too seriously.

But the concept -- why did it irritate Grice?

Well, there's the case of

(A man has a bandaged leg covered by his trousers).

A: Are we going to play squash tonight?

B instead of saying, "No", takes his time, unfolds his trousers, to display his bandaged leg.

What he 'explicates' (that's the old Roman 'ex-plico') (where I use 'explicate' to correlate with Grice's fastidious 'implicate') is that, well, he has a bandaged leg.

But Grice does NOT like that.

That's a no-no.

At most, what he may "mean" is, that "his leg is bad".

Grice notes: "the bandages may be fake".

------

Does he also "mean", "No, I won't be able to play squash tonight".

No.

Patton makes this point too.

Kripke, like a zillion other 'scholars' out there, like to play "Grice" -- I suppose we all heard of the phrase 'play God' and we know the consequences --.

Kripke's example (in "Semantic Reference, versus Speaker's Reference):

THIEF 1: Them cops's 'round the corner!
THIEF 2: Let's split!
THIEF 1 to THIEF 3: I say, "Them cops's 'round he corner!' You should stop gathering the booty.

--- Patton (in unpublished work he shared with the Club) wants to say that "Let's split", "Stop gathering the booty" are things anyone with a minimum quantity of reason should figure out for himself on hearing "The cops are around the corner".

Recall Grice:

"Only what I call the PRIMARY
intention of an utterer"

constitutes the

"meaning".

(WoW:221 -- same 'seminal' Meaning).

For,

"If I utter x, intending
some effect E"

and I also

"intend this effect to lead to
a FURTHER effect"

E2

"then, insofar as the
occurrence of E2 is tought to be
dependent SOLELY on E1, I cannot
regard E2 as IN THE LEAST
dependent on recognition
of my intention to induce E1."

--- But trust all linguists to ignore this. As Kaplan notes: "Barbara Partee said that when Grice delivered his William James, they were so eager, the linguists, for new ideas to go to the support of Chomsky -- against Bloomfield -- that they used a 'vacuum cleaner' to digest all that Grice could say."

Kaplan goes on, "I remarked to Partee that what a vacuum cleaner vacuums is dust, mostly".

---- Similarly, a male (born in Bombay) who knew Grice well at Berkeley, Steven Yablo, has it slightly different, "Implicatures happen".

----

Grice continues to gloss his example with the E1 (effect of the 'explicature' if you wish) and E2 (effect of the implicature proper -- to use 'proper' to qualify something as devious as a cancellable implicature is a semantic offense):

WoW:221:

"If, say, I intend to get a man
to do something"

--- i.e. boulomaic in my jargon

"by giving him some information,"

--- doxastic, almost, i.e. 'assertoric' --

"it cannot be regarded as [constitutive --
as per necessary and sufficient conditions -- of]
the meaning of my utterane to describe what
I intend him to do [rather than merely believe]."

For Grice, moves are all EXHIBITIVE.

As L. J. Kramer has it, THIS BLOG, they are all answers to questions.

What we can at MOST aim is to 'inform'. This begs the question that our co-conversationalist is, by default, an idiot that needs to be informed, but you get my drift.

If we also want OTHER things -- what Grice calls the 'pro-treptic', that's because, well, informing is BORING.

Consider that slut of the 1913 song:

"On Saturday I am willing,
if you only take the shilling,
to make a man of anyone of you."

This was a pathetic recruiting song.

I love to sing it in the piano in Eb

SHE: It makes you almost proud
----- to be a woman.
----- When you make a strapping soldier
----- of a kid. And he said:

HE: -- For I say, I woudn't do it.
------ And you surely put me through it.
------ For you came
------ and made me love you, so I did!

---

"He" is an idiot. But when the War broke, this became a recruit-recruit song.

"I'll make a man of anyone of you"

is thus 'informative': it displays the slut (Elsie Russell, if you must) and her intention (I cannot use a possessive after a bracket like that) to make a man of anyone who is listening to her insulting ditty.

But there is a further intention:

"The Army WANTS you".

-- i.e. 'lacks' you ("The floor wants sweeping"). And some of the idiots were 'drated' anyway.

The 'protrepsis' then is "Join the army!" -- we don't care if the slut will make a man of anyone of us (In those days, a female would not be drafted even if she payed for it).

Etc.

So back to the 'explicit'.

When it comes to gestures, the explicit won't do.

There are TWO strands in Grice:

i. One is the boring one about the 'dictiveness': his problems with 'say'. Obviously he never had seen Florrie Forde, "Say it with Flowers" -- a bore of a title. Apparently, the only things boring flowers can say is "I love you". Try to say, or have flowers say, "I hate you" with them.

ii. the gesture thing. When he repeatedly says he wants to focus on 'utterances' which are not yet linguistic but quasi-linguistic. THIS is the Grice I love. For I am an Italian and I love Benedeto Croce, and we think of utterances (we don't have that ugly word in Italian) to mean things (we don't have that vague predicate, 'mean') either.

So there!