Precious Grice

--- By J. L. Speranza
---------- for the Grice Circle

--- IN ONE OF HIS COMMENTS ("Compleat Griceian", this blog), Kramer refers to the wiki article on 'les precieux'. I append below the little passage involving 'lexical innovations' as it were, which I'll attempt a translation for, plus Griceanism invoked.

'preciosite', wiki:

"Les Précieux sont surtout connus pour leur
création lexicale intense dans le but de
désigner le monde de manière pudique (les
mots « bas » sont évités, ...

low words -- base words -- are avoided:

Gricean maxim:

"Avoid obscenities".

"ainsi que ceux dont les sonorités sont
jugées cocasses ou sales, comme écu,
"cul de sac" ou conçu)."

"L’usage de périphrases hyperboliques,"

Grice: "Every nice girl loves a sailor"

-- implicature via flouting, "Quality".

"de métaphores recherchées,"

-- beyond Grice's "You're the cream in my coffee".
His only example of a metaphor -- WoW.

"de pointes et de néologismes est notable."

"Certains termes précieux sont restés dans
l’usage commun, comme « furieusement », « s’encanailler » ou « hardi » en parlant d’une couleur mixte, comme dans « d’un blond hardi »."

-- At this point, the connection with
Grice would be the idea of 'usage commun',
i.e. the idea that Grice was an exponent,
as I think he was indeed, of
Ordinary Language Philosophy --
where we never quite grasped what
_is_ ordinary language (or what ordinary language is, if you prefer).

Opposite: extra-ordinary.
I find that 'ordinary' does not QUITE translate to Romance languages, except with an 'unwanted' implicature: "You are VERY ordinary" you'll hear in the vernacular meaning 'you lack manners' -- which is not what one would say of Grice.

I was once reading a Latin Loeb and recall I underlined a reference, in the English translation to 'extrordinary language', sic in this collocation, but I'll be damned (well, not really, I do hope I will one day soon) if I can find the Latin for it. I do not think it was a derivative of 'quotidien' but it may well be.

The wiki entry goes on:

"D’autres formules, tournées en dérision au XVIIe siècle, ont perduré à travers la littérature, telles que « le conseiller des grâces »


---- cfr. coup de grace, also used by Kramer, and which inspired me to write of the coup de grice.

"qui désigne un miroir, « le visage de l’âme » pour « le discours »,"


---- This is a good one. Cfr. 'the dress of the soul'.

"« donner dans l’amour permis » pour « se marier » ou « les miroirs de l'âme » pour « les yeux ».

i.e. mince pies.

Oddly, in Spanish, I read under preziosismo, it is known as 'gongorism' after J. L. Borges's favourite poet, Gongora.