Re: RT list: the 'forthright negotiator' principle

Thanks to D. Wilson for the reference to A. Durant's forthcoming book.

>I wanted to draw attention to [...]
>Meaning in the Media: Discourse,
>Controversy and Debate (OUP [...]

Cambridge. T. Wharton's press, that is. Recall his "Pragmatics and
non-verbal communication". Deidre is enthusiastic since as a reader of other work
in the area she confesses to
 
>generally [having] been disappointed [inter alia] by [...]
>the lack of theoretical sophistication
>on the semantics-pragmatics end.
 
And it seems Durant, who teaches at Middlesex, may be non-derogatorily
characterised as a "Gricean all [sic] sorts", where I use 'all sorts', not
"_of_ sorts", as in Liquorice. Alas 'philosophers' seem to be the only
creatures C. U. P. suggests this book is not meant for!
 
>By contrast, I was quite ignorant about legal issues
>connected with defamation [...]

And I see D. Wilson has an amazon.com blurb promoting the book. Alas,
philosophers are all too aware of defamation, since Hobbes reviewed the work of
a colleague, "That's not_ philosophy; it's Aristotelity".

>[or] what intuitive pragmatic principles are
>brought into play by lawyers in such disputes.

Exactly, and one problem with Durant is that his _next_ edition will have
to include a bit about the 'forthright negotiator principle' brought up by
N. Allott. (Cfr. my previous post on this thread on what the Delaware court
may possibly mean, to a Gricean, by 'subjective' understanding -- his
recherche example of Grice meaning that his colleague little daughter is to help
herself with a piece of cake by Grice's uttering, "Voila le chien. Il est
beau").
 
Lawyers are ever inventing and I enjoyed Nathan's comment on the trial
cited by S. Neale -- the greatest English-born living Gricean philosopher) in
his "Location" essay for the Perry festschrift where he refers to D. Wilson
drumming 'underdetrminacy' upon him at tutorials (Vide "U" for
'undeterminacy' in "A Dictionary of Grice" -- apres Atlas. I take it from Nathan that
if you use a firearm as paperweight the teleo-function is undermined even
if the implicature not cancelled!
 

----
 
But why Durant a Gricean? 
 
Well, a cursory review of the structuring of his study should provide  
ample evidence. 
 
THEORY.
 
He has a delightful section on "signs of troubles" -- where 'sign' is of  
course factive: those spots are a sign of the trouble that measles is. Or  
when he speaks of "different kinds of meaning question": the conceptual and  
analytic, which only interested Grice; the empirical, and the other. His  
"Making Sense of 'Meaning'", call me biased, but I see it as  an elaborating on 
Grice's 1948 handwritten notes for the Oxford Philosophy  Society, typed by 
Strawson, and sent (without Grice's consent) to "Philosophical  Review" 
nine years later! Durant's"Meaning and the appeal to semantics" made  me sigh 
for the sweeter, oh so much sweeeter appeal to pragmatics  -- between Scylla 
and Charybdis. His section on "Interpretive  variation" one feels should 
revise Bernstein's time-honoured "elaborate"  vs. "restricted" according to 
socio-economic status. His section on  "time-based meaning" provides a welcome 
re-christening to 'occasion'  meaning, the counterpart to Grice's charmingly 
titled "timeless" meaning. Part  III, "Verbal Disputes and Approaches to 
Resolving Them" reminds one of  Lakoff -- as per the post distributed by 
Hudson on this list, to  the (perlocutionary) effect that "Grice's objectivism" 
is wrong. Ah, would  philosophical disputes be ever so easy resolved ever! 
And bring them to the  media -- as B. Magee tried with his in his BBC "Men of 
Ideas" --  and get the lowest ratings in history. Durant's section on 
"Meaning as  a knockout competition" has an echo of Grice's glory: "a nice 
knockdown  argument", that is -- discussed by yours truly in _Jabberwocky_, vol. 5. 
-- and  later sweetened by a preference for a 'diagogic' (and not 
'epagogic') view  of disputes ("Reply to Richards"). The section on "standards of  
interpretation" reminds, on the other hand, Eco's polemic construal of  
overinterpretation as misunderstanding: a substandard there? 
 
APPLICATIONS. Going for the case studies, 
 
      (a) A section in Durant's study  comprises the quoted, "'reasonably 
capable of bearing the meaning attributed'",  which echoes one of Grice's 
most charming examples, predating most of his  published views:
    "only _very_ special circumstances [...] could enable me  to say
    'I want a paper', meaning thereby that it is  raining"
                                         WoW, 1953, p. 167
Oddly, when I tutor, I do use "It is raining" to indicate that my tutee has 
 to bring a paper by the end of next week, since we contrapose Grice's  apt 
illustration.
 
      (b) A second case study by Durant includes  the quotes, "not only 
what is said, but what is reasonably implied'", which  brings Grice to the task 
of analysing 'reasonableness', and I don't mean  his William James Lectures 
-- handwritten or typed -- and now in WoW, p. 30 --  but his later John 
Locke Lectures (Aspects of Reason) "It would be otiose"  (or words to that 
perlocutionary effect ) "to say that the price of the shoes  was rational" -- 
only 'reasonable'. 
 
       (c) Durant titles the next section  with the adage, "'if there is a 
meaning, it is doubtless objectionable'":  not a biscuit conditional, for 
one. 
 
The study concludes with a focus on "trust in interpretation" in  which I 
hoped to see Holdcroft discussed in his brilliant Gricean take on  'charity' 
-- and principles of conversation (in Parrett/Verschueren), and to  which 
I'll add the perhaps most important _break_ of trust. For how can  you, as 
Barry Gibbs sighs, mend a broken heart? 
 
References
Grice, Studies in the Way of Words.
          Conception of  Value
          Aspects of  Reason.
 
Cheers. 
 
J L Speranza 
   for the griceclub/blogspots.com