We are discussing with J the informants. As every student of linguistics knows (I'm not!), you have to RECORD conversations.
People, in general, converse over too silly things.
Grice is no exception. His examples are meant to be funny:
A: I'm out of petrol.
B: There's a garage round the corner.
(His first example of implicature).
Surely B is being a bit irrational. But on the other hand, what is one supposed to comment on A's stupid, careless remark?
There is this idea that if A says something, B has to follow suit. The actual first example by Grice is:
-- A: Smith is getting on quite well in his new bank at the bank, no?
--- B: Well, for all I know, he hasn't been sent to prison yet.
Again, the idea that to some stupid remark like A's, B has to follow suit!
To think that he (Grice) made a name in philosophy for studying this!
But recall his motivation! He was NOT into recorded conversations. He was into analyses in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions of verbs like "try", or connectives like "if". He wanted to show that, GIVEN the conditions that hold for ordinary conversations, most of what previous philosophers have found to be part of the 'sense' of this or that expression, is just an 'understanding', provided those conditions.
----
In general, perhaps guided exchanges -- as a buy-sell exchange, or a dialogue between a prostitute and a prospective client in a bar -- may be more Griceian than they need to.
Do prostitutes KNOW they are following the maxims?
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yes but Grice verges on ord-lang as well, as in Logic and Conv., does he not? And as I scrawled a few weeks back, people will use conditionals, like, every which way but loose, more or less--. We can't expect elegant premises in ord-lang--tho with a business proposal (even a ...Ho's) that tends to tighten things up--you pay X; you get Y. Or so she says. I believe conversational "ifs" usually just bring up informal sufficiency--hardly ever necessary (or nec. and suf.). Do X, and Y will follow, more often than not--or so it seems (another data issue perhaps). Unless you're in vegas, or yr favorite native casino. Do X (bet on snake eyes, high roller), and Y (winning) might hardly ever happen.
ReplyDeleteYes. Hos can be serious conversationalists.
ReplyDeleteYes. Grice deals with ordinary language-- but I should check with INDEX to "Studies in the Way of Words". Not that it is a perfect book. There are a few errata. But I would list what concepts he was into just by checking the index. You won't find "whore" in the index.