Tannenism-Griceanism

by JLS -- for the GC

KRAMER corrects me rightly (as opposed to hyperrightly): it's "Tannen", not "Tanner" (Oddly, Shaw's John Tanner -- in Man and Superman? -- is supposed to be a parody on "Juan Tenorio", Don Juan Tenorio, etc.

Anyway, tidying up the Swimming-Pool Library I come across this Tannen I ordered -- it's her Conversational Style and pretty disappointed was I to see Grice was cited only twice -- but anyway, at least it was a paperback edition. Wanting to further Gazdar's argument of the projection problem of sub-clausal implicatures, I regret that Tannen was focusing on 'a Thanksgiving party I enjoyed some time ago with friends and family'. Apparently, she cannot tell one from the other -- all were "Griceian to her" ('especially the males').

She started the conversation as follows:

"I hope you won't object my placing this
tape recorded here[as she placed it near
the flower arrangement]. I want to record
your implicatures".

Lynn objected.

"How are you supposed to do that, Debbie? Isn't an implicature something that doesn't go on record?"

"Mashed potatoes anyone?"

-----


On p. 13, Tannen cites Grice:

--- don't think I've read the thing: there's a name index:

"In her later work," Debbie writes, -- meaning Robin of course [Lakoff] -- "she envisions the strategies of distancing, deferring and camaderieying not as hierarchically ordered but rather as points on a continuum of conversational preferences."

"One end of the continuum represents
the APPLICATION of Grice's (1967)maxims"

-- which she, Robin Talmach, was aware of, because his husband had managed to find (or get) a copy of an unvolunteered typescript of Grice's handwritten notes. (Lakoff prides of having made 1,000 mimeograph copies of lecture ii -- which he circulated 'among those who wanted it, and some who didn't' --.

"For her purposes, Lakoff refers to these
as "Rules of Clarity""

--- and which apparently Kramer prefers to dub, "Rules of Brevity" (or Efficiency, if pressed).

--- Oddly, Grice did USE 'Principle' or "Desideratum" of 'Clarity' in his earlier Notes (cited Chapman) and cfr. "When Clarity is not enough" -- etc.

Tannen: "In this [Gricean observational] style,
ONLY the content of the message
is important: speaker evidence no
involvement with each other or
with the subject matter".

Wrong Wrong Wrong Wrong and Wrong -- Anyone familiar with Grice (1948) knows that he can get boringly involved the utterer's involvement with the addressee. In fact, when I was teaching Tapper what he called Grice 101, he said, "I have to thank you. I thought Grice was that bore who was into what U believes that A belives that U believes that on the reason of what A believes then U believes that what U believes is necessarily stupid; but it isn't, you know."

The OTHER reference is on p. ---- wait a sec. That's just the reference. Not fair!