RT list: Grice Disentangled

Not that he needs it, but allow me to disimplicate.

Browsing the Short/Lewis (online) Latin dictionary I come across

inplicatura

(sic with an 'n') -- the reference being to the Loeb Classical Library,
Sidonius (a paleo-Gricean) where it is translated as 'entanglement'. So
surely when Grice coined 'disimplicature' he was entangling in the tradition of
Sidonius.

--- The more and more I read about Grice's playgroup the more I think
'disimplicature' should be given a more central status than it currently has.

Consider Austin on 'pleasure'. The relentless, conventionalist, literalist
he was, he wanted the members of the Play Group to focus on formulae like

"It is my pleasure to introduce to you..."

--- Hampshire said to Grice (Chapman reports, p. 62). "We might just as
well analyse the concept of 'faith' by analysing the minutiæ of 'Yours
faithfully'". -- I'm currently studying 'minutiae':

Review: Success/The Séance @ Lyceum New Connections Festival ... Jun 15,
2009 ... All the drama is in the minutiæ of conversation and bickering, the
entrances and exits, what's said and what's left unsaid, ...
www.tvbomb.co.uk/index.php?option=com...task...

--- so let's review how Chapman unburies the 'disimplicature' -- to join
company with the implicature, the impliciture, and the explicature:

(and again I used the concept vis a vis Watts, as referred to by Borg in
I. R. P.)

---
Chapman writes:
"A non-extensional intention is one  that the subject in question
would recognise. This is the one most commonly  considered in
discussions of intention, Grice argues. If (i)  
i.   'The dean intends to ruin the department  (by
appointing Snodgrass chairman)
is true on  a non-extensional reading, then the Dean would, if forced, 
be in a position  to aver (ii)
ii.  I intend to ruin the Department.
If  the dean says
iii.  I shall ruin the Department.
he is  EXPRESSING, rather than STATING his intention.
It would ... be inconsistent  for to Dean to say
iv. I shall ruin the Department, but  maybe I won't
in fact ruin  it.
[In "Intention and Uncertainty" Grice refers to the minutiae -- that  he 
loved -- of distinguishing (but is this a 'class' thing?) 'shall' from 'will'  
-- and my favourite cancellation ever is: "I shall, but I won't" -- cf. the 
very  'common': "You can, but you mayn't!"
"The apparent counter-examples",  Chapman writes, "can
be explained in terms of 'disimplicature'"
"In  effect, context sometimes means that normal
ENTAILMENTS are  suspended."
"If we say that
v. Hamlet saw  his father on the ramparts of Elsinore.
in a context where it is  generally known that
vi. Hamlet's father is  dead
then we are NOT committed to the USUAL entailment  that
vii. Hamlet's father was in fact on the  ramparts.
In such a context, the speaker [utterer? JLS]  'disimplicates'
that Hamlet's father was on the ramparts. 
"In the  same way, when CONTEXT makes it quite apparent
that there may be  forces...
[And I add 'context' emphatically because it's the focus,  as
Chapman sees it, of the divergence, inter alia, 
between Grice and RT  -- last ch. of her book]
"... that will prevent us from fulfilling  an
intention, we are not committed to the usual entailment
that we believe  we will fulfil it.:
"A speaker who says,
viii.  Bill intends to climb Everest next week
didimplicates that Bill is sure  he will climb Everest, just
because everyone knows of the possibly  difficulties involved"
-- Chapman writes. 
Especially, if as Grice has  it "Vacuous Names" he ("Marmaduke
Bloggs" really) was reported as having done  it on his 
'hands and knees' -- but the Merseyside Geographical  Society
still threw the party in his  honour!)
---
Chapman:
"The notion of disimplicature  suggests soome
interesting possible extensions to Grice's theory of  
conversation."
For one, it connects, via the 'loose uses' Grice  speaks
in
ix. The tie is green
x.  The tie is light blue
(WOW, iii) to S/W, "Loose  Talk".
and  indeed Grice's "saw Banquo". 
---
Chapman:
"As it is  presented in 'Logic and Conversation', ...
implicature is a matter of ADDING  meaning to
'what is said': to conventional or entailed meaning.
With the  notion of disimplicature, Grice appears
to be conceding that the meaning  conveyed by
a speaker in a context may in fact  be
LESS THAN IS ENTAILED  
by the linguistic form used."
"In the cases under discusion,  there is some particular
element, some ENTAILMENT, that  is
'dropped'
-- [rather  than 'added' as is D. S. M. W's wont -- :), or 'picked up, 
really]
"...  in context."
"However,"
and this relates to Carston's pod in CSMN  (which I have to end listening 
to oneday!) re: metaphor.
"... he also  hints that disimplicature can be 'TOTAL'
-- what Carston in that talk  calls the limiting case in the continuum
" 'TOTAL, as in xii' (Grice)  cited by Chapman.
xii. You're  the cream in my coffee
---
"This remark," Chapman notes, "appears  in parentheses and is
not elaborated, but Grice is presumably suggesting  that, in a
context which makes the WHOLE of 'what is said' untenable,  it
can be replaced with an implicated, metaphorical meaning"
I have a  few marginal notes here: 
"cf. dis-trust, dis-order"
Chapman  continues:
"The mechanisms of disimplicature are not
discussed at  all"
-- I think it was Grice's and Austin's granting the 'hoi polloi' (or  
should it be 'hoi polloi')
what Mundle has recognised:
"In the  name of _ordinary_ language Austin
demands standards of purity and  precision of 
speech which are extraordinarily rare
except  among men who got a first in Classics Greats" 
-- and who love the  minutiæ.
----
"... but they could presumably be explained in  terms of the
assumption that the speaker is abiding by the maxims
of  conversation, particularly the first maxim of Quality. If one
or all the  entailments of 'what is said' are plainly FALSE, they
can be assumed NOT TO  ARISE on that particular
occasion of use. If the disimplicature is total, the  hearer is
forced to seek a different interpretation of the  utterance"
I should add that it's also within the Warnock-Grice's abiding  with 
Modified Occam's Razor -- for the laughing stock of the Play Group seems to  have 
been a person (call him "L. Jonathan Cohen") who'd rather appeal to 'yet  
ANOTHER' sense [for surely 'entailments' are _SENSE-CONSTITUTIVE] when  
implicature and disimplicature will do.
Chapman:
"There is  undoubtedly problems inherent in the notion 
of disimplicature, which would  provide at least potential
motivations for not pursuing the idea."
---  Well, I wouldn't rely on it for a research grant!
--- cfr. Grice on  Austin on 'very' vs. 'highly': "a total failure"
But then  again,
"If philosophy generated no new problems it would be dead!"  (Grice) -- and 
it's amusing that Chapman ends up the whole book (and ditto  myself my PhD 
Dissertation) with that Gricean quote! (and I had not even  digested what he 
meant-nn by the 'bread and  butter'!)
----
Cheers,
J. L. Speranza
The Grice  Club.
The Swimming-Pool  Library
Bordighera
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