The meaning of 'refudiate': A Griceian analysis

by J. L. Speranza, for the Grice Club

THE THREAD WAS STARTED after quoting directly from the Newsweek. Most commentaries in the thread are relevant and they would merit independent sub-commentary, in that each raises a particular point.

POINTS TO CONSIDER:

---- the reduction of 'expression' meaning to 'utterer meaning' (or implicature). She said (but later deleted), in Twitter that peaceful Muslims should refudiate the mosque being built nereby. It was not clear if they should refudiate, always peacefully, of course, the mosque or the mosque PLAN. She deleted the message and wrote instead that what peaceful Muslims should do is to REFUTE the mosque plan. This irrirated some liberals who thought she had meant 'rePudiate' and had a 'typo' with the 'f' -- two keys which are far away in the keyboard. Plus, she had used the verb, 'reFudiate' in a TV interview, so it was not a LEXICAL issue, but strictly semantical.

---- pragmatics. It has been argued that the context was clear to some -- not to me: peaceful Muslims should do something bad, yet still peaceful, with that plan of the mosque. It was argued that since the INTENT to communicate THAT was obvious, the word had to be understood in context. Critics who read her remark like that counterargued that by the same token, the catholic church near the bombing in Oklahoma should also be 'refudiated' by peaceful Catholics.

----- The semantics of 'refudiate': the case for portmanteau. This is the best case. It argues that 'refudiate' is a portmanteau word from 'refute' and 'repudiate', alla Humpty Dumpty's "Jabberwocky". The problem is pragmatic. It has been argued that if you refute something there's no need to repudiate it, or vice versa. "To repudiate something you have just overthrown by argument seems totally otiose: there's 'refute' and 'repudiate'; 'refudiate' is just a mess" -- they'd argue.

----- The case of malaprop. Some have argued along these lines, but the weak point, as J notes is that Dogberry (or Malaprop) is 'meant' by the author (Shakespeare or Sheridan) such that his or her utterance carry an unintended 'implicature'. There's no need to bring in this layer of sophisticated meaning-intentions at this point, since Palin said she was COINING a word.

----- It has been argued that she was not very modest. Instead of admitting that he mispelled or mispronounced a word ('repudiate') she got the wrong word ('refute') and said she, like Shakespeare, likes to coin words. "English is a living thing". Contra this, it has been argued that every typo would thus be a coinage -- making most students in public schools real 'geniuses' and thus allowing less heavy taxes on the population on state-run education. This is perhaps one implicature too many.

Etc.