--- Grice, WoW:214
---- SOME REMARKS TO FOLLOW. Google hits retrieve N. Allott.
---- (We are discussing this in other thread, but I thought...)
Because the important point for Grice is to consider the whole utterance as specimen of 'ordinary' and 'natural' English, as Kramer has it:
i. That remark, 'Smith couldn't get on without his trouble and strife,' meant that Smith found his wife indispensable.
--- This is idionsyncratic but I agree with Grice.
We don't need to know identity of utterer. Thus, Wharton's other example, "By Jane's remark", etc. seems less 'ordinary'.
---- I can imagine someone not understanding this?
---- It's the typical TWO-idiom move by Grice: 'trouble and strife' -- code for 'wife', as we are analysing, but also the more problematic, 'to get on' and how it paraphrases (with 'incorporated' negation, etc.) as 'dispensable', and rendering 'not get on without' as 'INdispensable', etc.
---- Other. The important thing is that it is NOT a statement or specification of Utterer's meaning. It's the REMARK that is attributed as 'having meant' (always in the past) something followed by a 'that-' clause.
Etc.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
For some reason, N. E. has that as 'indispensIble' :) -- hey he corrected my Halborne, here! :).
ReplyDeleteIn his notes, which I'm taking the liberty to report here -- they are meant for his Oslo classes, N. E. writes of the remark as meaning-that, without it being factive, which is an excellent observation by Nick.
ReplyDeleteIt's good to compare this with the more detailed specifications in WoW:5 -- though. Do we get 'natural' reports of 'that-' clauses for subjects OTHER than utterer?
---- I shall check -- NOT really in my idiolect.
It's only an utterer that can mean that p. But this is my own brand of BIG avoidance of pathetic fallacy. We don't 'have' "mean" in the vernacular! cfr. Latin, mentAre, mentIre, though.
Indeed, on p. 91, Grice DISALLOWS the example in the header of this post to count as utterer's meaning and he would actually regard his early example as ill-formed, or loose use indeed. Remarks don't mean that. People mean that p or q by remarks. (Or rather utterers, but a remark is not an utterer). So what Grice would have had as a 'specification' here would NEED to make recourse of 'quotation marks' only. As when N. E. has the remark to mean, "Smith managed quite well without his wife". Or something. Oddly, Grice is venturing onto theoretical realms BEYOND the canon of ordinary language. Beyond the full Austinian code, as he will later say. Risky! But hardly as T. Wharton would say, 'meany', either! Perhaps we need the 'mean' (good middle point, Latin 'medianus') between ordinary-language and Griceanism (a Gricean mannerism). Good title for an essay or something.
ReplyDeleteI owe the triple ambiguity of 'mean' to Jevons, as reported, THIS BLOG -- and online, "Elementary lessons":
ReplyDelete1. mean -- cognate with Sanskrit, to think.
2. mean as in "Mean Mr. Mustard" -- (cfr. Wharton, "Meany", this blog)
3. mean as 'medianus' (the golden mean).
---- Etc.
Regardless of the obviosu point (to me) that a remark cannot mean anything. I.e. A remark does NOT mean, simpliciter. ---
ReplyDeleteA reductio ad absurdum of the contrary thesis (or contradictory, really): a remark means, and means-that. We can focus on the totally DISIMILAR character of
'trouble and strife' and 'wife'.
Surely 'trouble and strife' does NOT mean 'wife'.
It's filled with 'emotional' meaning. It's not JUST a 'linguistic code' as one source online has it. That tone -- on which only recent work is focusing, e.g. Williamson in a talk I heard him give at Yale -- compares to points by Frege and Grice on 'colour' etc. --. So, whoever is giving that GLOSS:
That remark, "Smith couldn't get on without his trouble and strife,' meant that Smith found his wife indispensable.
---- is so rude and brusque it hurts! It is sort of idiot-proof, or fool-proof, if you must, and I cannot see how someone needed the gloss in the first place. Grice KNEW that, because it's not just a problem with the slang, 'trouble and strife'. He is also trading on the 'get on' which is so idiomatic that an inability to understand it points to the patronising tone in the remark ABOUT the remark.
---- The intention by Grice in using the example in 1948 is totally different from the one he developed by the time of the William James Lectures, where he was WELL INTO the best tradition of the best type of schematic type of fine-grained analysis of things. So he would NEVER have accepted the gloss given way back in 1948 as 'epitome' of anything.
Or something.