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Saturday, April 2, 2011

Could have been better expressed

Gordon Schochet found a rather grisly headline in an article with
an Associated Press byline on FindLaw, dated 28 March, which I have
filed under "could have been better expressed": "Fla [Florida]
parents charged with killing daughter in court."

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That above from World Wide Words, ed. M. Quinion.

Again, this is a good opportunity to have a good Griceian reading of all that stuff from Quinion.

As in:

British tourist suspected murdered after being found dead.

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The point is that, as it reads, the utterance may violate a "conversational maxim". As such, it is better to be charitable and opt for a reading that does NOT violate such a maxim. E.g. that the British tourist, when found dead, was later suspected to have been murdered.

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Those who spot those items, however -- and this is the point, PRETEND, in a genial jocular way, to read it the odd way and derive the odd implicature.

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Or something like that.

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