Vale, Grice

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

R. B. Jones, Strand 5, THIS BLOG:

"In Strand 5 of his Retrospective Epilogue (the valedictory),
Grice uses a great variety of novel terminology"

----

That's charming, I find: to use novel terminology 'on your way out'. I suppose he thought he could do that.

In fact,

vale-dictory

means what it says: it's dictiveness with a vengeance.

"He said, 'Vale'".

He 'vale-dicted'.

Austin regretted that English was unlike Latin in this creativity. "Why, one would just as well expect a word for 'hello-saying', 'thank-you saying', etc."

Austin's example was "rubify". "To red-say". "I rubify the rose" -- I call the rose red. Austin then wanted to argue if 'rubify' was a performative. "While it is true that the rose gets called 'red' by my rubifying it, I would not go as far as to suggest that my saying so turns the (previously colourless) rose red."

----

The Archival Material of the Grice Collection at Berkeley notes that (as reported in Chapman, "Grice", Palgrave, 2006), indeed [why wouldn't he? It's not the ultimate mark of wit, either], Grice entitled this "Valedictory Essay". Let me see if I find the exact Chapman reference:

That must be her last chapter, right?

---

No. Her last chapter is HER field: Leech, and Penny Brown, and Robin Lakoff: females who have 'done' Grice.

So this -- the death of Grice -- is left for the "last but one".

---

Can't seem to find it.

Instead one reads that

"In the summer of 1987 he underwent eye surgery"

Chapman adds:

"in an attempt to rescue his [failing] sight."

---- which IS explanatory.

Plus,

"by the end of the year he needed a hearing aid" [emphasis mine. J. L. Speranza].

I knew a lady who disconnected it on occasion as she reached the 80s. As I say, 'what's the good of having to LISTEN to things?'.

----

"In addition," Chapman adds,

"his mobility became further restricted."

----

So this was vale diction with love.

---

But when does Chapman (do) say 'valedictory'?

Oh, here it is:

p. 218.

it's Note 12. I have it in fluorescent yellow in my copy:

It reads:

"Preliminary Valediction".

-- as deposited in the 14 cardboxes in the Grice Collection at Bancroft, BANC 90/131c if you must.

----

The note, which was possibly NOT 'dated' by Grice, is dated:

"Preliminary Valediction, 1985".

(While Chapman is not careful to provide a catalogue raisone, why should she, she is very careful (qua professor of English that I love! I know no philosopher who would go to such pains!) to provide semi-exact quotations after simple quotes to indicate items in the Collection. My favourite is her "Odds and Ends" -- Folder B-56C -- for Cardbox 11).

The ref. is to p. 18 where Chapman refers to this 'unpublished retrospective' which includes (Grice's thing) gems like:

"between the wars,"

---- I cannot see why Grice was so obsessed with the Great War that was a mere baby-memory to him (he was 2 years old when the Great War was great)

"in the heyday of Philosophical
Analysis"

--- he must be referring to Urmson's bestseller, "Philosophical Analysis: its development between the wars" which I quoted to Horn and merited it a mention of both me and J. O. Urmson in "The Blackwell Handbook of Pragmatics" -- hardly my sort of hand, seeing how unfitting the 'gentleman''s pocket it is --.

Grice adds,

"when these words"

-- i.e.

a. Philosophical
b. Analysis

--- I would have rather say, "when these TWO words, in syntactic concatenation"

"were on every cultured and progressive lip,"

----- My lips are sealed. (WoW:ii)
----- lip-service.

--

"what was thought of as being
subjected to analysis
were not linguistic
[or as I'd prefer 'linguistic']
but non-linguistic entities:
facts or (in a certain"

--- or UNcertain I'd say --

"sense) propositions, not words
or sentences."