How Common Is the Common Prayer?

By J. L. Speranza, F. R. S. (failed) &c.
for the Grice Club, &c.

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How common is the common prayer?

Consider a sentence chosen at random:

"O Lord our heavenly Father,
high & mighty, king of kings,
Lord of Lords, the only ruler of princes,
who doest from Thy throne behold
all the dwellers upon earth,
Most heartily we beseech thee with thy favour".

As M. Warner(*) comments, "Surely not your idea of a the avoidance of unnecessary prolixity as favoured by Grice and his Cooperative Principle"

"be to the point"
"don't use long appositions"
"don't be overinformative"

--- I discussed these things with Warner at large. "I expect you'll find my occasional Gricean references futile". No. But then, I am an atheist (especially when discussing the Common Prayer). Etc.

Warner thinks this is political:

Our Father which art in heaven

is rustic, and very o-kay. It's low-Anglican, which is what I am. The common-prayer thing is High Falutin Anglican, which I'm not.

It's so circumlocutory, Warner notes, that it "sounds remarkably like a petition to [an] Emperor."

such as James I, etc.

"Very diferent in respect of [Gricean] prolixity to that other address to
'Our Father which art in heaven'".

The point here is occasional:

i.e. in terms of occasional meaning. If I'm not an atheist, I am a theist. We don't believe "God" really has _ears_. And if he has, he won't be troubled with _my_ English. The communion is _spiritual_. So

Here the conversation is _lip-service_: we are joining in a congregation to hear ourselves talking to God.

Even the Lord's prayer sounds circumlocutionary in this respect. I propose a short Gricean analysis:

Our Father,

-- 'our' is not vocative as "Our Gracie, sing us a song". Here it's a congregation speaking to _our_ father. Father meant, for Christians, and indeed Jewish people, literal. "Father" is not just your regular father -- as my father is Architect Speranza, but everybody's father. Adam's father if you must.

which art in heaven,


-- Our Father possibly knows already where he is. This is circumlocutory and an attempt at 'long-distance' communication. We are supposed to be intending to deliver a message from Earth to Heaven.
-- How much the stamp?


hallowed be thy name;

-- hallowed by us. The implicature here is not that the name is not hallowed already. Cfr. "Tim, clean up your room" or to use the lingo, "Tim, which art in the summer camp, when you return, cleaned up be thy room". An even more roundabout way would go, "Let thy name continue to be as hallowed as it always has or at least should have been.

"thy kingdom come"

again. The locative, by being unspecific, is supposed to mean, 'somewhere'. As when we say to a dog, "come", i.e come here.

"thy will be done,
in earth as it is in heaven."

this is an expression of support. God's will will be done regardless of whether we express it or not. The implicature to be cancel here is, along the lines: "Mind not, God: we will respect your will, especially here in earth". God does not MIND what we think about it. It's not a 'cooperative principle' here. We are not huggling.

"Give us this day our daily bread."

The ambiguity here lies in 'our' -- if it's "our" daily bread, why is HE to give us to us? "Give us this day your daily bread as meant to us" is perhaps closer in spirit if not in letter to what God may have in mind, if he has one.


"And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive them that trespass against us."

The unwanted implicature is, "But seeing that we don't, don't." I.e. seeing that we don't forgive them that trespasses against us, you forgive us the same way." Trespasses ARE prosecuted. THe whole point of calling him a trespaseer is to prosecute him. The trespasser cares a fig about being forgiven. As when the lady before the trespasser gets the electric chair doth add, "And I forgive him" and then the priest reads the bible, "And god will forgive you". The man gets electrified, anyroads. If this is merely an expression of desire it's even more circumlocutionary. Forgive us our trespasses! Are we implicating that he won't? He is fair and just and tolerant, and Benevolence herself, so the imperative seems uninvited in this respect.

"And lead us not into temptation;
but deliver us from evil."

The 'and' and the 'but' here invite conversational and conventional implicatures respectively. In particular, the 'but' seems uninvited in that there is no actual contrast (cfr. "She was poor BUT she was honest"). So here it's more like "Lead us not into temptation AND deliver us from evil". Indeed, it seems to be the same thing, which can thus be better expressed as: "Lead us not into temptation, and do that in such a way that it tautologically will yield that by so doing you will, ipso facto, delivering us from wicked wicked evil".

"For thine is the kingdom,
the power, and the glory"

But He knew that. The idea is that this be the premise in the big argument. It is BECAUSE ('for') this holds -- i.e. that God has it on us -- that we can ask what we are asking. This seems presumptuous in that it implicates that God will not do it unless we ask Him to do it. Etc.


"for ever and ever."

Grice, "do not be more informative than is required" "be brief"
"for ever" versus "for ever and ever"
One ever too much.
cfr. that idiotic phrase, "for ever and a day"

"Amen."

This is not English. It's echoic utterance not necessarily meant as ironic. It means, in popular parlance, something like "thank you", or "thank you for your attention", which sounds sacrilegous, but it ain't.