Grice: Techniques for the Growing of "Grass"

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

---- AS GRICE WAS WELL AWARE, marijuana is a euphemism. "People need to refer to it in various other ways than the literal". 'Grass' is perhaps the most of common of them."

Kramer says that I should accept polysemy, but I Kant. Grice considers the hypotactical construction:

"If I shall then be helping the
grass to grow, I shall have no
time for reading".

--- "Under very special circumstances would my addressee take me to mean that since I shall be assisting marijuana to mature, I shall not be aware of the what is going on in the world, and therefore spared of its horrors."

The most likely supposition is that he (Grice's addressee -- he always uses 'he' for 'he') will infer that to assist marijuana to mature is one of the horrors of the world, by which, via Modus Tollendo Tollens, he would detach the apodosis of the hypotaxis, "I shall be helping the grass to grow", to read, rather, "I shall be dead".

"One problem," he comments, "is that we ALL shall be dead, at one time or another -- so the question arises as to why one would like to say such idiocy in the first place."

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"Oddly, the explicit mention of 'marijuana' in protasis, while disambiguating is not enough on this front." He does not belabour the point, but the idea seems to be that "MariJuana" is a common Mexican name?

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