Grice on Trust in Conversation

Speranza

-- Was emphatic about.

 

On the other hand, there's Mary McCarthy.

 

She would say of Lilian Hellman:

 

"Every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'".

 

Does this merit a Griceian analysis?

 

Of course, Grice was fascinated with 'the' -- since it had also fascinated Strawson ("The King of France is bald" -- "And I mean 'the'"). So there are senses in which _the_ can be a lie: "She met the man". "She met the men". "She met some men". Or "She played THE game", "She played some game", etc.

 

It's easier perhaps with 'and'. Strawson, but NOT Grice, would take,

 

"She got a child and got married."

 

as being a lie -- depending on 'and' -- as a report of incidents that went: she got married and got a child. For Grice, 'and', rather, is the logician's "&", with the 'then' added as an implicature. But surely 'and' can also be a lie, as in

 

"He travelled to China and Japan" when would better be expressed by "He travelled to China OR Japan."

Wear Green: The Implicatures

Speranza

Echoes from St. Patrick's Day.

 

A cartoon strip of DUSTIN:

 

Girl: OUCH!

Dustin: I pinched you because you're not wearing green.

Girl: Hello, my dress is green!

Dustin: No, it isn't -- it's red.

Girl: It's made of locally sourced, hand-woven, organic cotton.

 

Grice used to play with this. He would ask children:

 

Can a sweater be green and red all over?

 

It can!

 

Surely, there is a _sense_ of 'green' and an implicature of 'green' -- or not.

Wear Green: The Implicatures

Speranza

Echoes from St. Patrick's Day.

 

A cartoon strip of DUSTIN:

 

Girl: OUCH!

Dustin: I pinched you because you're not wearing green.

Girl: Hello, my dress is green!

Dustin: No, it isn't -- it's red.

Girl: It's made of locally sourced, hand-woven, organic cotton.

 

Grice used to play with this. He would ask children:

 

Can a sweater be green and red all over?

 

It can!

 

Surely, there is a _sense_ of 'green' and an implicature of 'green' -- or not.

Grice's Ducks

Speranza

From today's World Wide Words:

 © Michael Quinion 2014 http://www.worldwidewords.org.

"A headline over a story from Reuters: "China urges restraint in Ukraine, ducks comment on Crimea vote." Philip Peluso sent that in and added, "Wisely, the chickens, turkeys and geese refused to be quoted.""

This relates to Grice's commentary on "&".

Strawson's example was:
"She married and had a child."

Strawson noted that there is an implicature here, in that, the logically equivalent:

"She had a child and married."

presupposes that the order of events is a different one.

Now, Reuters will, if possible, get away with '&'.

"China urges restraint in Ukraine AND ducks comment on Crimea vote."

Instead, they choose the ungrammatical (in Grice's and Strawson's view):

"China urges restraint in Ukraine, ducks comment on Crimea vote.

Now, since that is ungrammatical UPON ONE READING, one is forced to look for a reading that is GRAMMATICAL -- a Griceian maxim, alla "speak grammatically".

We arrive at the favoured interpretation:

"China urges restraint in Ukraine, ducks comment on Crimea vote. Wisely, the chickens, turkeys and geese refused to be quoted."

Or not.

It may be argued that

"China urges restraint in Ukraine"

and

"A flock of ducks comment on Crimea vote"

flouts one of Grice's maxims, in that the topic seems to change dramatically. But this implicature can ALWAYS be cancelled, whereas a grammatical mistake is a grammatical mistake is a grammatical mistake.

 

 

 

 

As Soon As Possible: The Implicature

Speranza

It was in a television programme, a chapter of a well-known series, that something like the following conversation took place:

A: I'll pay you back as soon as possible.

B: Of course you'll do. There's no way you can do it as soon as it is not possible.

Or perhaps:

A: Don't worry. I will pay you back -- as soon as possible.

B: I KNOW. No way you can do it as soon as it is IMpossible.

--- So there are various variations.

As a Griceian, or as Griceians, we may need the logical form. The 'possible' obviously involves a modal operator. What, after Kripke & company, has been symbolised as a diamond:

<> p

The phrase 'a. s. a. p' is then in co-variance with its negation

~ <> p

'impossible'

or

it is not the case as soon as possible p.

There may be readings of 'a.s.a.p.' in which it does NOT violate one of what Grice calls 'conversational rules' (or 'desiderata' in earlier versions of his now infamous "Conversation" lectures), where the idea of 'implicature' is introduced.

An implicature is an INTENTIONAL extra-logical ingredient to the 'conversational pool', and it may be argued that the user or utterer of 'a.s.a.p' has none of that in mind. Or not.

In any case, it does seem to flout a conversational desiderata -- informativeness, trustworthiness, relevance, perspicuity (Grice, echoing Kant, managed to find FOUR different conversational categories matching Kant's famous quartette of quantitas-qualitas-relatio-modus). Or not.