RT list: Breaking the Code

Further to the previous ref. to Levi-Strauss ("La pensee sauvage") made by
Sperber/Wilson ('the parents of RT", was Grice the grandfather -- cfr.
Levi-Strauss on metaphoric uses of kinship terms) in Multilingual, to the
effect that:
 
     Brown/Levinson provide 'a rare exception' of a Pragmatic Analysis
"alla Grice" of phenomena (like politeness) that Levi-Strauss considers
'codally'.
 
--- I refer now to this title I came across while looking for further
interface. Breaking the code. A nice one, I trust. It reminds me of Turing in a
way, via Hodges. Hodges, a logician with Wolfson (in Oxford) was once
approached by me, as for some reason thought he was the WRONG Hodges ('the
author of "Logic", with Penguin'). Turing was the _other_ big codebreaker.
 
It strikes me that the phrase 'breaking the code', as used in this book to
analyse Levi-Strauss on myth, etc, is a clever phrase. Almost a malaprop
well used (a benaprop). I'm not sure Brown/Levinson is a 'rare exception', I
would think Grice proposed 'an analysis of politeness phenomena' along
pragmatic lines before them, or Robin Tolmach. Consider his phrase, "We should
allow other maxims, like 'be polite', to work to generate nonconventional
yet NonConversational implicatures, too" -- Logic and Conversation.
 
So how can the code be broken? Well, god knows! (and I trust Goffman did,
for I always viewed Brown/Levinson more as a Goffmanite thing than Gricean
-- but I loved their use of Kenny, and inferences of the type that Grice
uses in "Probability, Desirability (misquoted 'Defeasibility'), and Mood
Operators -- rewritten as Aspects of Reason, with 'mood' changed into 'mode'
apres Moravcsik). Politeness phenomena go over my head, or as Levi-Strauss
would say, 'never pass my head'. But if Sperber/Wilson are right, and
Levi-Strauss _was_ a code theorist, as he shouldn't, the code needs to be broken in
this _other_ 'sense'. The problem here is rhetorical. If the Bee Gees go
like they did, they should make us think of things like 'pseudo-code' and
such: 'who needs a HEART when a HEART can be broken?'
 
Cheers,
 
J. L. Speranza, The Swimming-Pool Library, Bordighera
Received on Thu Nov 5 14:18:05 2009