Grice in Polari

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

J. KENNEDY IN "Comment on "On Grice's Longer day":

"Are you familiar with Palare? Polari?"

I think I am. I wonder which phrases in Polari fit a Griceian analysis. I knew P. BARKER, of Lancaster, and also H. Young, of New Zealand, who know all that one needs to know about Polari.

I don't recall many expressions in Polari. One seems to be:

"He is so."

---

Or intentionally:

"He is so"

I think this means something via conversational implicature. I'm not sure what. At first, and still today, I have troubles intoning it.

If it means, "He is so... -- intelligent".

I can see the point: It's a truncated phrase. But this is NOT, apparently, the right intonation. It means, 'so' as in _thus_. Thus making it a COMPLETE, not nontruncated sentence:

"He is THUS".

Now, Polari seems to trade on the contextual matters, and one thing that distinguishes from Cockney is that you can hear it OUTSIDE the sound of Bow bells, I expect, or you could, in any case.

Etc.