Grice's White Lies

"On trying and lying: cultural configurations of Grice's maxim of quality"
by Eve Danziger

Intercultural Pragmatics. Volume 7, Issue 2, Pages 199–219 2010


"Gricean communication takes place when

an audience"

-- addressee --

"recognizes an utterer's intention to communicate some specific content by producing a particular locution"

-- or gesture, or even 'fart' (some 'farting, burping, etc. can be VERY intentional' -- Adorno).

"This general view is discernible in Grice's wording of the maxim of Quality, which pivots on the idea of utterer “trying” to avoid falsehood."

What is not clear in the wording if the utterer is a 'he' or a 'she'. Apparently, 'he's like more than 'she's, or less, I forget.

Eve continues:

"The cultural model of utterance interpretation among the Mopan Maya of Eastern Central America however, does not refer to the intentions of the utterer."

I'm surprised they refer to ANYthing!

"For example, falsehoods are categorized by Mopan as blameworthy violations of Quality (“lying”) whether or not the utterer was aware of the falsehood at the moment of utterance."

See the mopan Maya translation of Grice, "Logic and Conversation" -- in ideographs. They made a little solar calendar out of it, with each maxim representing the equinox of the sun in the solstice of global warming.

"Ethnographic evidence suggests that even mutually known falsehoods are not interpreted figuratively among traditional Mopan, who do not produce or recognize fiction."

---- Except a few grandmothers who enjoy Barbara Cartland (as they hide in tents).

"But since Mopan conversation otherwise proceeds in general very much as it does in other languages, the Mopan findings suggest that intention-seeking must not in fact be necessary to most ordinary conversational interaction."

OR that Grice is Euro-centric. I always correct this: Oxon-centric. Vide the last chapter of my PhD thesis, "The cunning of conversational reason".

Eve writes:

"This conclusion supports post-Gricean views in which routine conscious interrogation of interlocutors' intentions are not necessarily required for the conduct of ordinary conversation in any society."

EXCEPT cross-examination.

As the king says to the Queen in "Alice in Wonderland"

"Really, dear, YOU should be cross-examining her -- it gives me a headache". (Vide Grice on 'cross-examination' in "Retrospective Epilogue" -- 'cross-examination apes conversation'.

Eve writes:

"Overall, the data suggest that Grice was perhaps right that the figurative interpretation of novel flouts requires intention-seeking on the part of audiences."

Perhaps????? He was mightly RIGHT about it!

"It also suggests, however, that intention-seeking in conversation may be reserved for cases in which a maxim violation is suspected, and may be confined to those cases in which the status of utterer's intentions is culturally understood to be relevant to the question of whether a violation has indeed taken place."

Right. But then, who cares. I mean. When I speak to the greengrocer I usually implicate things different from those I implicate when I speak to my mother!

If people were being to fine-tuned to their addressees conversation would never start!

----

"Don't speak till you're spoken to!", the Duchess said to Alice.
"If everyone followed this maxim, I cannot see how conversation would ever start in the first place".


---

In Grice's scheme, each PIROT is a rational agent, very much like a Chomskyan monstrosity (ideal) -- so they share a cultural background. So you ask:

"Are you a virgin?"

And you expect the right, honest reply.

It has been argued that 'virgin', in English, means 'male'.


"I hardly can be a 'virgin'. I'm male'"

This implicature is cancelled in Italian, and Latin, where 'virgin' is a FEMININE noun. In English, which lacks gender, 'virgin' CAN be used for a male. Surely that affects a few implicatures one can derive out of it. Or not.

----


PDF (124 KB) PDF with Links (124 KB) Permalink
http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/IPRG.2010.010
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