Grice the Rationalist, Gardiner the Empiricist

Of course philosophers will not have heard of Gardiner. But I have _everything_ in my Swimming-Pool Library.

When I got hold of that slim volume edited by Pergamon, "Conversation" by Oxonian authors, Taylor and Cameron, I was pleased that Grice was for one rightly construed as an 'irreverent conservative rationalist'. Vis a vis, the next section goes: Sir Alan Gardiner, our empiricist chap.

So, if only for that, his work should merit a revisit.

The problem with Gardiner was perhaps his affiliation. Wasn't he a Prof. of some specific language? Of course he was. It's very typical of philosophers to underestimate profs. of _specific_ languages. E.g. I have a book by one J. W. Entwistle, more or less the same period, but you won't find anyone quoting him because he taught _Spanish_ in Oxford.

Similarly, I have A. H. Sayce's book on general linguistics, and nobody quotes him because he taught Assyrian, or something. In Oxford, too. I'll check if my copy of Gardiner mentions his affiliation. -- No, it doesn't. I guess he did _not_ have an affiliation! The cheek! :) (I think he was professor of Egypt. Sic.)

This is what my Files say about him (below) (It was good to have a suppressed note by Austin, but Ryle DID quote him, more below). Gardiner he wore glasses (I have a pic of him from some Spanish encyclopaedia ("Espasa Calpe"). Born in Eltham, Kent? 1879-1963. Alan Henderson L., Sir and Dr. Friend of J.R. Firth (Firth 1957:7). Knighted 1948. He quotes G. Ryle (refs. below). He is, in turn, quoted by Ryle, in
Parkinson, _Theories of Meaning_. Ryle was Oxford Waynflete prof. of metaphysical philosophy Sperber/Wilson do quote Gardiner in connection with Grice in their 1986 Relevance. Also Taylor/Cameron.

Divergence Grice/Gardiner in their 1987.

Gardiner makes a distinction "describing" and "implying" -- a la implicature/explicature distinction.

Example by Gardiner:

(1) A: Have you been to the theatre lately?
B: We were at Bitter Sweet a few nights ago.
A: Rather good, ain't it
B: Topping!

Gardiner writes (hatingly) (1951:46): "the utterances seem to follow one another like the mechanical utterances of automata". I guess he did not appreciate the theatre of Noel Coward. The distinction speech/language is equivalent to parole/langue, performance/competence. Cfr. Genesis 11.

Conversation mentioned in Gardiner's 1932: pp. 18, 45, 46, 56, 59, 63, 109.

Taxonomy of speech acts (1951:189)

conversational moves
.
.
. . .
. . .
Utterer-based Setting-based Addresee-based

exclaiming stating demanding
calling for
.
.
. .
. .
informing acting
(asking) (requesting).

Gardiner on "implicature" (1932:204):

(2) A: Your account is overdrawn.
B: Is it!
(+> "if you will look again, you'll see
that it's not you bloody bastard"
A: I'm afraid it is.
(+> "who's a bloody bastard then?"

On metaphor. He refers reader to Fowlers's King's English, and Clutton-Brock, _Metaphor_.

That sounded to me like a nice, cryptic ref. worth studying, as we did when we analysed the Grammar of Metaphor ref. in Leech -- In this case, I'm not as motivated when I see the source, Clutton Brock's is Tract No. XI of the Society for Pure English!. "Metaphor is any diversion of a word from its central meaning. It's a blending thing. A mixture thing. It is _speech_ obsessed with _language_. Grice has this as follows:

"It may not be impossible that
what starts life, so to speak,
as a conversational implicature to
become conventionalised."

Gardiner has this as follows: If you say

(3) You're the cream in my coffee.

too often, then the old meaning "ceases to be felt when the word is used, incongruent word-function becomes congruent and metaphor dies. A new word-form or a new word-meaning has become established. Speech has become language." Of course I doubt that is the case with (1), Gardiner is probably thinking of _other_ Gricean cases:

(4) He's pushing up the daisies.

(qua "recognised idiom", Grice, Studies, p.90), and maybe not even that.
Perhaps something like

(5) I note he's not here.

meaning I realise but hardly "write down" that he's not here. In metaphor "something which is less concrete is referred to in terms of something less abstract". My, he was cautious in his use: why not say "more concrete" and "more abstract"? "We are scarcely aware of the image in speaking of

(6) the arm of the chair
(7) the foot of a table
(8) the mouth of a river
(9) the neck of a bottle
(10) the veins in a piece of marble.

"Metaphor is moribund when we say

(11) Prices sink or rise
(12) A voice is high or low
(13) His character is hard or coarse.

"So too in descriptions of mental happenings:

(14) To FEEL tired.

======WHY SO? He can _feel_ but not _be_ tired?

(15) to _grasp_ a thought
(16) to _imagine_ a situation
(17) to _direct_ one's attention.

"Metaphor is a Shortened Simile": from

(18) Rebellion spread abroad, even as
when a fire blazes forth

we get

(19) Rebellion blazed forth.

"If this expalantion is offered in illustration of the psychological principle involved, no fault can be found in it". "Metaphor is a phenomenon of language belonging MIDWAY between a word as used figuratively by an individual speaker and a word of stereotyped meaning from which imagery once present has completely vanished. The two extremes are separated by any number of intermediate stages." He considers

(20) In the waves they (lamps on a sea-wall) bore their GIMLETS of light.

(Thos Hardy. Brought to Gardiner's attention by G. Loane in the TLS, 21 Jan. 1932. I love how these English writers dwell so much in the parochial!). Gardiner quotes from Fowler (the book he refers is available online and I have discussed him in this FORUM. The King's English).

(21) All the evidence must first be SIFTED.

-- a "three-quarters dead metaphor". As for a stone dead metaphor, again
from Fowler:

(22) bearing witness

Garinder hypothesises: "the disappareance from a word of more concrete collateral possibilities may be the cause of a metaphor's death; the metaphor in

(23) towel-horse

is kept alive by the application of "horse" to Derby winners." Finally he considers -- adapted:

(24) This building is awful.

as uttered by King James when visiting St. Paul's cathedral. He meant "awe-inspiring", but people thought he was being _metaphorical_!

As for Gardiner/Ryle: I quote for the record Ryle's mention of Gardiner. Gardiner was rather unfair with himself if he thought ordinary language philosophers ignored him. Call Ryle's quoting Gardiner in the (opening paragraph to his symposium contribution to the) Aristotelian Society "ignoring" any day! RYLE writes ('Use, Usage and Meaning', Proc. of the Aristotelian Society, Supp. vol 35, -- same volume where Grice contributed with "A causal theory of perception" -- repr. in G. Parkinson, The Theory of Meaning, Oxford Readings in Philosophy, ed. GJ. Warnock):

In 1932 Mr. (now Sir) Alan H Gardiner published
_The Theory of Speech and Language (Clarendon Press).
A central theme of his book was what, with some
acknowledged verbal artificiality, he labelled
the distinction between 'Language' and 'Speech'.
I shall draw, develop and apply this distinction
in my own way.

As for Gardiner's quoting Ryle, we have 333n1 and 342-3: -- both referring to his Retrospect --. "When I used such expressions as 'mirrored in the mind', I did not imply that I believed in the 'mind' as some place or entity contained in the 'body'. Such a belief which the Ancient Egypitans had -- (his beloved Egyptians. I think he _was_ prof. of Egyptology in Oxford)) has recently been wittily described by Ryle as 'the Ghost in the Machine'. On p.343 he parts company with Ryle, "It is clear, as Ryle teaches, taht consciousness of what we are doing plays a small part in our
actions. Ryle's analysing

(25) I witness a tweak.

as having no sense. "Tweaks are not the sorts of things of which it makes sense to say that they are witnessed or unwitnessed at all!" Gardiner says in contradistinction, "To reject the notion of what we think of as _unconscious_ seems to land us back in the unfruitful speculations of Bloomfield". A sort of Gardinerian position is to be found in Grice (Studies, 'Prolegomena') where he defends a sort of linguistic theory in which you _can_ say (31). It would be "misleading" but _true_. Gardiner's example: if I'm walking to Sandford, then I presumably intend to go there. Yet, it is nonsense to say that "the intention of walking to Sandford is
implicit in _every_ step I take in that direction!" Similarly, Ryle finds
"incorrect" to say

(26) I'm observing a tweak.

as much as we can say

(33) I'm observing a robin.

Gardiner opposes: "except as regard the different organs of sense involved, I see no difference of status here". Very Gricean, that! Gardiner is being very _naughty_ (if that's the word in a FLN forum) when he says: "I seize upon just one petty detail in Ryle's interesting and stimulating book, for, frankly, the rest of it, I do not understand." Also: "I cannot agree with Ryle that the method of introspection is completely defunct". Some repudiation of Wundt, that! -- Great man, Sir Alan!

Works by A. H. L. Gardiner:

1917. Linguistic theory: replies to some critics.
English Studies 19. 59-

1932. The theory of speech and language.
OUP. 2nd edn 1951.
Sections:

Language as the _product_ of speech.

The social origin of speech: the listener.

The mutual relations of language and speech.

Silence and speech.

The antithesis of language and speech.

1940. The theory of proper names. Oxford.

1947. Ancient Egyptian Onomastica

1948. The distinction of speech and language.
Atti del III Congresso Int. dei Linguistici 345-53.

1950. An Egyptian Grammar.

1951. A grammarian's thoughts on a recent philosophical work.
TPS

1951. Retrospect. To (1932).

1961. Egypt of the Pharaos.

1962. Tutankhamen's Painted box

1963. Ancient Egyptian Paitings
with Nina De Garis Davis.

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