"He wasn't going to bullshit"

--
KRAMER reports Calvin reporting:

"My grandfather would say: “I'm going upstairs to fuck your grandmother.” He was an honest man, and he wasn't going to bullshit a four-year-old."

In Kramer's analysis:

"Grandpa flouts the maxim of quantity with WAY too much information,"

-- Not necessarily.

"I'm going upstairs" sounds INCOMPLETE on the face of it. (In my previous post, I considered TWO subscenarios for this: the behaviour is naturally showing that -- he is heading upstairs. An odder scenario would be where no clue is available to the recipient as to what U is doing, whence "I'm going upstairs" MAY be informative -- but still incomplete. We DO need completion of 'go' verbs. We can't just say, "My uncle goes". It's not grammatical. We need the DESTINATION. "My uncle went to Corsica", e.g.
--

"and the maxim of manner (I guess) by using profanity with a small child."

In my previous post, I suggested that by applying detachability (Grice's test), i.e. "another way of putting forward that 'meaning'" -- seem to be just as odd. "I'm going upstairs to make love to your grandma", or "to cuddle up with your grandma". Even 'to sleep' with your grandma seems odd, under the circumstances. So it cannot have to do JUST with the choice of "f*ck". The profanity seems to be in the mentioning of the FACT. Some aspects of the world are best considered as TABOO regardless. Consider 'homosexual'. Apparently, there is NO way to explain that concept that lacks some 'unwanted' "implicature" -- or 'lesbian'. It seems like (or as if) every term is euphemistic (or dysphemistic). So with 'f*ck'. Therefore, it's the CONCEPT, not the expression of the concept. Hence it cannot really be "Manner" or MODUS, which is a category that Grice uses for 'expression' rather than "what is expressed" but, granted, Grice DID have problems with precisely THAT category. He was amusing himself with Kant, and now he had to follow the consequences of seeing everything, artificially, in terms of four categories.

---

Kramer:

"Then Carlin’s flouts the maxim of relevance by defending the Grandfather’s adherence to the maxim of quality when it was his flouting of quantity and manner that needed explanation. (JL may have a different analysis.)"

I agree, as I noted in my previous, and now that I re-read your anaysis, that there is this 'allusion', as it were to something as vague as Qualitas, which is Grice's totally artificial label for what's going on here: the utterer's CLAIM to what he utters. "He was an honest man" IS a cliche, and it has MANY other implications, too, not just 'he said the truth' (regardless). In fact, many anti-Kantians argue that it's more honest to LIE under some circumstances. So Carlin is just questioning and wanting his audience to QUESTION what we mean 'honest'.

But yes, the maxim of Relatio (as Grice would have it -- "Relation", used by Kant along with Qualitaet, Quantitaet, and Modus -- in the translation by Abbott that Grice is relying on) also plays its bit of a role. So this seems like an excellent example, thank you, for the FOUR categories.

QUALITAS: 'he was an honest man'
QUANTITAS 'to f*ck your granmother'
RELATIO: ??
MODUS: ??

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My objections would go against, in a way, the points I marked "??" above. I mentioned above why the use of a particular lexeme at this point ('f*ck') seems t pervade ANY _following_ of "Modus", as it were. As for the "??" attached to "Relatio", the issue seems different. For Kramer notes,

"[U] flouts [Relation, 'be relevant']" 'by defending sub-U's honesty."

I wouldn't know if one can claim someone is flouting 'be relevant' LIKE THAT, or by doing THAT. It seems U is free, by the cooperative principle, to do what he wants about the report, in oratio recta, of what his grandfather said. So, the comment about sub-U's honesty SEEMS relevant -- it 'dovetails' as Grice prefers, on occasion --. Indeed, it seems pretty relevant -- in that Grandpa's move was 'inappropriate' and so U needs to explain why the inappropropriateness is merely 'superficial' -- i.e. at the level of what is 'said' or asserted [that Sub-U was going upstairs to make love to his wife] rather than implicated.


Or not.