"My lips are sealed" (Grice, WoW:30)

by J. L. Speranza
for the Grice Circle.

KRAMER, in "Grice and Grice on contracts and contracts" (commentary), THIS BLOG:

"Which [conversational] maxim does "My lips are
sealed" [Grice, WoW:30] violate? It is true, terse,
informative (as to the utterer's intention not to
inform further), relevant, etc. It is certainly
uncooperative in the frame of reference of an interrogation, but
not, it seems to me, in the frame of reference of
the conversation it ends."

Excellent. I loved the way you analysed it in terms of the four categories -- by which I mean that perhaps we don't need the 'etc.'! (The four categories, to be remidned, are the Kantotelian, Qualitas ('it is true'), Quantitas ('it is informative') , Relatio ('it relates') and Modus ('it is terse').

Anyway, I wonder about 'Qualitas'. It seems such a blatant metaphor to me. Cfr. waterboard interrogation. Not that I even suggest that is cooperative! But you get my draft, if not drift!

----

I suppose it's an English expression, "My lips are sealed". I mean, not of Roman provenance, but trust Cicero to have said something along those lines.

It sounds metaphorical. It is perhaps vague too, in that it is archaic in the use of BE vis a vis HAVE. In the old days, it was ALLways (sic) 'be'. "She be come". This became "She has come", which still sounds ungrammatical to me. In the Romance languages, verbs of movement like 'come' always get conjugation with 'etre', not 'avoir'.

So, the distinction here is between

i. My lips [the two of them] are sealed -- for good?
ii. My lips HAVE BEEN sealed. By myself (I presume).

But back to Grice:

He has diverted the Harvard audience for some 15 minutes. This is p. 30 of the lectur that had started on p. 22, and he writes:

"It is now time" [about time. JLS]

"to show the connection between the Cooperative
Principle and maxims, on the one hand, and
conversational implicature on the other. A partipant
in a talk exchange may fail to fulfil a maxim in
various ways, including the following: he may quitely
and unostentatiously violate a maxim; if so,
in some cases he will be liable to mislead. [But] he may
[also] OPT OUT [empahsis Grice's. JLS] from the operation
both of the maxim and of the cooperative principle."

----

I interperse a comment here out of respect for (c) things vis a vis Grice! And I'm reminded of Martinich's problem with making sense of Grice's taxonomy here ("Some philosophical problems about conversational maxims", Philosophical Quarterly. I think I have pasted the abstract of this in this blog). Grice goes on:

"He may say, indicate, or allow it to become
plain that he is unwilling to cooperate
[further -- as Kramer suggests] in the way the
maxim requires."

By 'maxim' I take he means in this context 'quantitas 1', 'make
your contribution as informative as is required
(for the current purposes of the exchange)'. Grice goes on:

"He may say, for example,"

and here, for the record, the cliche gets prefaced:

[iii] I cannot say more; my lips are sealed.

-----

This should possibly give Hohfeld the trembles! The way Grice uses 'liable', for example, pretty loosely. But then 'liable' IS perhaps prone to be equivocated upon. But note the deontic use of the epistemic, 'can'. Shouldn't that strictly read:

iv. I SHOULDN'S say more [And I won't]. My lips are sealed.

----

It seems that 'my lips are sealed' is the EFFECT (of something). It is like Hypoolitus, in the cite by J. L. Austin, "My heart said something, but my lips said other" (or something).

WHY are the utterer's 'lips' 'sealed'?

It seems that the metaphor also hides some level of covertness about it. The "I cannot say more" seems so otiose that I elluded in my primary report that Kramer was commenting on.

Consider:

A: But is SHE a virgin?
B: My lips are sealed.

This is so gross that I will change the example. Sorry about that.

A: But is it raining?
B: My lips are sealed.

---- I never HEARD the phrase. I think I would be offended if someone were to utter to me "My lips are sealed" in my face. Or not!