RT list: ex cathedra

In a message dated 5/17/2009 6:26:01 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
alessandro.capone@istruzione.it writes:
One area which, to my knowledge, has not been investigated, is the study
of the extent to which the Gricean maxims are imposed on students in
Western schools and Universities.

-----

If I may, I think we are ignoring here the 'cunning of reason', so-called
(by Schopenhauer and Hegel).
 
I was forced to accept it after reading, of all books, one on public
educatin in America. The author's argument (Feigl, I think the author) was:
 
----- students (or persons) who don't comply as "Anglo"
      have to 'play white'.
 
      E.g. honesty, not cheating, etc. are seen as
      _Western_, white American values.
 
      If students, from the cultures where they come from,
      _follow_ these 'desiderata', they are criticised as
      'having become white'.
 
I challenged the view with lots of quotes from R. S. Peters (of UCL,
almost) on the conceptual analysis of education. It seems to me (as for Peters)
that there is some sort
of 'value-appropriateness' here. Values, which would, as a Gricean would
say,
be _universal_ -- and W. P. Robinson does not need to add that Grice is
saying that
only _ex cathedra_ -- are _not_ imposed on students.
 
In fact, Elinor Och Keenan, and the polemic with others, has shown that
even in Magalasya they _do_ abide with the maxims.
 
And note too that Grice was possibly 'joking' about the _seriousness_ of
the "CP" and maxims. It's not like it's illegal to utter a metaphor, irony,
sarcasm, contradiction, tautology, meiosis, litotes, innuendo, metonymy,
synechdoche, etc. In the 'anglo' scheme of things these 'figures of speech'
are best explained as _flouts_ to some 'desideratum' for the maximally
efficient 'mutual influencing' via the exchange of propositional
attitude-information. This does not mean that each member of each culture has to _process_
the desiderata in the same way.
 
If you are talking about "English composition" teachers -- the best way to
learn what they have to teach is _flout_ what they say: look at James
Joyce!
 
Note that S. Sperber would say 'ex cathedra' is the wrong of Grice: 'ex
laboratorio' is the thing (*As T. Wharton, who has studied bees can
testify: "It works with humans. Let's test now if it works with rats").
 
JLS
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Received on Mon May 18 15:57:04 2009