by JLS
for the GC
Kramer in "Controversial Grice", comments:
"Because the lawyer knows that the witness
was intoxicated, he thinks it would be a good idea
for the jury, which does not know that fact, to ask
the witness "Were you intoxicated?""
This reminds me of Grice, WoW: 34
"Examples that involve exploitation, that is, a
procedure by which a maxim is flouted for the
purpose of getting a conversational implicature
by means of something of the nature of a figure
of speech."
"Meiosis. Of a man known to have broken up all
the furniture one says 'He was a little intoxicated'."
----
Griceish in the courtroom:
A: Were you intoxicated.
B: Slightly.
---
Variants:
A: Were you intoxicated.
B: Slightly.
A: What do you mean, 'slightly'?
B: A little. I grant I was a little intoxicated.
A: Which would amount to your breaking
--- up all the furniture.
--------- (Giggling in court).
---
A: I was a little intoxicated.
B: You broke up all the furinture.
A: "All" is, technically, a hyperbole.
-----
A: Were you intoxicated?
B: A little.
A: So you were.
B: We all are, you know, technically. There are
---- toxins in your organism as you speak.
A: I mean regarding the incident of your
---- breaking up all the furniture.
A: It wasn't all.
----
Etc.
One trusts the jury gets the drift. Etc.
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Well, I apoologize for leading you astray. The examination might go more like this:
ReplyDeleteA: Were you intoxicated?
Opposing Counsel: Objection, calls for an opinion.
A: I'll rephrase. Had you consumed any alcoholic beverage that evening?
...
Witnesses testify to facts. "Was he drunk?" is not allowed. "Was he unsteady on his feet?" is not allowed (he might have been faking). "Did he appear unsteady on his feet?" is allowed. I'm not saying all courtrooms are run so punctiliously. Not every deviation from protocol is worth correcting. But when it matters, the requirements can be quite rigorous indeed.
I should also add that I was not a trial lawyer, and I may be wrong about these details, but I think they illustrate how a philosophically correct courtroom would operate.
Excellent points, Larry. I have expanded on them on, let me check, two posts. One on "Objection. Calls for an opinion", where I provide a genuine transcript of the stuff. Surely there are zillion cases -- some of which may raise good Gricean points, if not all of them should. The second on "doubt-or-denial" as it relates to your use of 'allowed' and 'not allowed' regarding what I may call "phenomenalistic" idioms ("he appears to have been pretty unsteady on his feet") that fascinated Grice since the 1950s onwards -- especially vis a vis Wittgensteinian arguments which he found 'lightly' made ("Some like Witters, but Moore's my man" -- he echoed from Austin -- and he refers to Wittgenstein as a "minor figure" in the history of philosophy, "along with Wollaston and Bosanquet" -- which is very unfair -- to Bosanquet.
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