Re: RT list: 'conceptually encoded information that contributes to implicatur...

Thanks to Gutt for his query that I'll leave for the time to others to
answer! Just to add my 2cs worth, as they say. _Another_ passage of the
*Lingua* essay referred to by Gutt reads (have just finished a cursory reading)
goes:
 
   "In terms of the distinctions drawn in section 1, then,
   Grice appears to treat conventional implicatures as
   linguistically encoded conceptual representations
   which make no contribution to the truth conditions of
   the utterances which carry them, but contribute rather
   to implicatures."
 
which seems to dwell on the 'conventional' vs. 'conversational', too? I.e.
as, perhaps amounting to the following, with: Grice appearing "to treat
CONVENTIONAL implicature as a linguistically encoded conceptual
representation ... which contributes to CONVERSATIONAL implicature" -- which does not
seem to be the _point_ in question?
 
Anway, I'd add
 
(i) a reprint reference, to the excellent reference to one of my favourite
Gricean utterances of all time:
 
         i. My brother-in-law lives on a peak in Darien;
            his great aunt, on the other hand, was
            a nurse in World War I.
 
--- (WoW:361) which would merit a longer discussion: I've researched all
about Darien and can testify! -- allow me to drop a further reference that
should interest listers. Indeed, the late, London-born, sometime fellow of
New (Coll, Oxford), L. J. Cohen did pose some serious problems to Griceanism,
which Grice, without crediting Cohen, recognises (WoW:375 -- point (3)).
While I am ever pleased to find that while Australian-born philosopher (of
Magdalen, Oxford), R. C. S. Walker's riposte (in Platts, "Conversational
implicature") is sometimes credited, few have cared to quote yet a second
round in Cohen's argumentation: his "Can the conversationalist hypothesis be
defended?" (Philosophical Studies, 1977), which Cohen refers to in his book
on analysis and dialogue, and more importantly, cared to reprint -- or his
posthumous executor did -- in his important collection on "Language and
Knowledge".
 
(ii) Some running commentaries on the Darien-sentence. Of course we all
know about 'the peak' as mentioned in Chapman's Homer. There are _other_
Dariens involved, but the famous one that give rise to all the implicatures, is
 in modern _Panama_. Grice comments that should 'a man' _say_ (i), his
addressee
 
   "might well be somewhat baffled".
 
-- as indeed anyone who cares to hear the poetic collocation "on a peak in
Darien" echoically mistreated like _that_ should -- which would render (i)
as perhaps "??", a point to consider when testing claims. (I don't
personally use '??' but some of my friends do!
    Sperber/Wilson are correct in noting Grice's use of 'convention' vis a
vis these points. For Grice does accept, in this, his "Valedictory Essay"
-- as Chapman tells us, _Grice_ -- was the originally intended title for
the "Retrospective Essay" -- reads of (i) as featuring
 
   "a condition CONVENTIONALLY signified
    by the presence of [phi]" as "not [in fact]
    realised".
 
The U, to use Grice's mixed metaphor, has "done violence" to 'convention'
-- or to 'conventional meaning'. A 'misuse' is involved. Grice goes on to
comment: "The nonreali[s]ation of this condition would also be regarded as
insufficient to FALSIFY" the 'statement' put forward in (i). Grice dubs this
a case of 'formality _sans_ dictiveness', or 'a case of a condition which
is part of what the words conventionally mean without being part of what
the words say" -- a distinction, one wants to add, 'all too frequently
ignored by Austin', as Grice would have it in his "Reply to Richards" (and
needless to add, then why do it, totally ignored by "Witters"!).
    S/W go on to analyse the important suggestion by Grice that a
higher-level 'non-central' force (in the words of WoW:vii) is involved. I have to
admit that the topic did not merit for me much of a _philosophical_ import.
Horn may be right when he said that the obituaries for 'conventional
implicature' were somewhat premature. I _see_ the strength and colour of Grice's
arguments when attacking Strawson on 'if' (and using 'therefore' as a
strawman's particle, as it were). With more 'colloquial' colloquialisms, like
'on the other hand' -- I'm never sure if the _left_ one is meant ceteris
paribus -- I'm less sure I see them. -- Cheers,
 
J. L. Speranza
  for the griceclub.blogspot.
 
ObRT: this seems to be pretty relevant to RT at large.
 
Refs:
  Grice, WoW
  Cohen, Can the conversationalist hypothesis be defended?
  Strawson, Intro to logical theory.
 
 
Received on Mon Feb 1 12:37:57 2010