by J. L. Speranza, of the Grice Club.
-- for the Grice Club.
J commented under "The Coopetitive Principle":
"The Proverbial...."Win-Win" situation, JLster! That might even work when, like, it's two white-collar, corporate executives exchanging firm handshakes. That said, the Novell networking gear was pretty tight--until Microsoft ripped 'em off (with help from oracle)."
Too true. I guess I was having in mind two passages by Grice:
1. One is in his still unpublished -- perhaps they'll never be -- lectures on, guess, "Logic and Conversation". They are deposited at the Bancroft Library, Berkeley where he taught for 20 years. They belong in Oxford, though! They are dated, "Oxford, 1965" and I have examined some of their points in the minutes of this blog -- (if the search engine works, "self-love" should do the trick). At the time, Grice was indeed considering helpfulness as a variant to what he'll later have as 'cooperative'. I'm never sure if he used the Kantian scheme just to please the international audience at Harvard! So, I would think he would have liked to be reminded that back in 1913, someone had coined 'coopetition' as a blend between benevolence (cooperation) and self-love (competition). Of course the schema needs a few tweaks.
2. Back in 1987, twenty years after he had delivered the 'international' lectures at Harvard, I guess it was too late to change the label, "cooperative", as applied to principle. Linguists had vacuumed it! Yet, he was aware that 'cooperative' had to be understood minimally -- as 'coopetitive' I would have guessed. This is the passage I was having in mind:
"[S]ince we are concerned as theorists only
with concerted talking, we should recognise
that, even within the dimension of voluntary
exchanges (which are all that concern us)
collaboration in achieving exchange of
['information'] or the institution of
decisios may co-exist with a high
degree of reserve, hostility, and
chicanery and with a hihg degree of
diversity [including total competitiveness] in
the motivations underlying quite meager
common objectives."
(Studies in the way of words, p. 370).
The schema needs elaboration. What he says about
'cross-examination' (the tutor in him) may
apply to J's scenario:
"two white-collar corporate
executives exchanging firm handshakes"
---
How?
Grice's cross-examination:
---- "And so, you'd think that's a CONVENTIONAL
-------- implicature?"
Student: "No. It is not a conventiona
----- implicature. It is a generalised conversational
----- implicature, sir. Thank you, sir."
---- (Grice was obsessed with cross-examinations because he cannot imagine that someone would say, "The Battle of Trafalgar was fought in 1805" (a student) to someone (the teacher) who had TAUGHT the thing to the student in the first place).
Grice writes:
"We have to remember to take into account
a secondary range of cases
like cross-examinations,"
--- Kramer will dislike the 'like' --
And I'll add, echoing strictly J, "two white-collar executives exchanging firm handshakes" -- but the scenario has to be adapted to qualify as coopetition, as the term was used in 1913, though -- it wasn't really win-win, was it? --
Grice goes on:
"in which even the common objectives.
are *spurious*, apparent rather than
real; the joint enterprise is a
simulation, rather than an instance,
of even the most minimal conversational
cooperation; but such instances honour the
cooperative principle at least to the exent
of aping its application."
(WoW: 370).
Replacing 'coopetition' and 'coopetitive' in the last sentence would make Grice's claim trivial, though, and not real in harmony with the goal of his schema:
"conversational coopetition"
--- "instances which honour the coopetitive principle".
but you get my draft! (if not drift!).
In any case, it would seem that the win-win situation, of the "two white collar corporate executives exchanging firm handshakes" is perhaps not the counterexample we are looking for and not the idea behind coopetition, either. I was just playing with the word...!
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I'm not sure I share Grice's take on cross-examination. He is, of course, right that a cross-examination is not a conversation between the lawyer and the witness. The first principle of cross-examination is "Never ask a question to which you do not know the answer." What kind of conversation has one party contribute no new information to his interlocutor?
ReplyDeleteBut I think HPG is mistaking the phsyical "conversation" between the lawyer and witness for the logical one between the witness and the jury. In that conversation, the part of the jury is played by the lawyers.
First, the jury "says" to the witness, through the lawyer who called him, "Tell us things you know that will make us find for the party for whom you are testifying." The witness responds. As he does, opposing counsel can challenge his testimony, i.e., enforce some of the maxims, by objection.
The classic objections are that testimony is "incompetent, irrelevant, or immaterial."
Incompetence is about structural, as opposed to personal, credibility. Hearsay evidence is the classic case of incompetent testimony. The witness didn't observe the events he is reporting. He is, therefore, an unreliable reporter of those events. He is violating the maxim of quality.
Relevance speaks for itself. A witness must answer the jury's question with information the jury can reasonably find useful to its deliberations. Irrelevant questions are not allowed. ("Did you see the man who is accused of murder steal a car two year ago?")
Materiality, I think, had to do with information that is irrelevant on account of its degree. In Federal courts, relevance and materiality are now handled by the requirement that the testimony be "of consequence." As any conversational move should be!
But opposing counsel cannot object to there being too little information in the witness's testimony. For that, we need cross-examination. That's where the jury asks, this time through the mouth of the opposing counsel, "What else should we know?" and the witness is made to reveal his drug-addiction, his near-sightedness, his personal feelings toward one or the other of the parties, his affair with the prosecutor, and whatever else the maximum of quantity demands for a full response to the jury's question about what the witness knows that will help it decide the case.
During cross-examination, the first party's counsel gets to enforce the maxims, and he may call the witness on "re-direct" examination to answer any more questions that he believes the jury would want answered.
This procedure is repeated until the maxims have been satisfied, i.e., until the conversation has appropriately ended.
You are referring to a jury trial. In the typical felony trial (at least California) the prosecutor runs the show, and asks any and all questions, especially leading ones meant to show that a defendant's sleazy or deviant, etc.--that's the implicature--insinuate whenever possible. It's hardly fact-based or empirical.
ReplyDeleteI am for putting bad guys and thugs away, and sometimes a defense attorney--at least high-priced sort-- will win by grandstanding as well, and the guilty go free (...can we say OJ?...tho' it's possible the LAPD ..tampered with evidence..as they do in many cases). But typically the prosecutor puts on a show (with the judge's approval), and the objections are overruled (even serious sorts), and people who are not guilty ..or perhaps only guilty of an infraction of sorts are put away for years. So at least in regard to CourtSpeak, one's tempted to say there's an over-abundance of implicature, insinuation, and lawyerly oratory, and an insufficient concern with fact-checking (and the E-word...evidentialism).
I expanded on "Grice, cross-examined" after reading Kramer´s commentary. So I will have now to elaborate on "Grice, redirect examined" and "on felony trial", too. Ah well. The implicature -- she´s there when you most need her, right? -- or as Steven Yablo is prone of saying, "Implicatures happen."
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