RT list: Re: The Old Flouter

This lister asks for some clarification (this reminds me of Lewis Carroll,
what the Eaglet says:
 
`Speak English!' said the Eaglet. `I don't know the meaning of half those
long words, and, what's more, I don't believe you do either!'
 
So I'll comment on the commentary. As Borges used to love about Byron, "I
wish he would explicate his explanation".
 
I wrote: "Thanks to F. Yus for his update."
 
Poor good ole (ole friendly) Yus keeps updating and seldom gets a tat for a
 tit.
 
"I enjoyed reading _about_ the new theory (surely neo-Gricean) of
flouting!"
 
Since this was the first in a list of four or five articles he cared to
reference in his personal blog.
 
"Abstract and stuff available online."
 
The 'and stuff" is _ironic_. You need a subscription! But surely Revd.
Smith was right when he wrote, "I never read a book or article before reviewing
 its clumsy abstract; it prejudices a man so!".
 
"If anything, I enjoyed that 'flouting' is now a Keyword in academia!"
 
I don't know WHO does this keywords. It struck me as fun to have 'flouting'
 as a new academe! I should do 'flout' as per etym. in the OED, too.
 
"Some running commentary on the abstract by this Norwegian linguist."
 
It strikes me that she may be affiliated to this center to which the list
admin of this list is also affiliated with.

The author had written:
 
"In this paper, an outline of a theory of flouting based on Alfred Schutz’
theory of relevance structures is presented."
 
I then provide a reference to Schutz, an obscure German (German emigre to
America, to be more precise) author if ever there was one. My associations
with him are 'philosophical' as I try often to make the point that most of
the Gricean stuff is _philosophical_ in nature.
 
"I see Schutz is now keyworded along good ole Grice!"
 
This Is important, for Schutz scholars will now know that his theories have
 been flouted by a Norwegian linguist!
 
What follows is a reminiscence of what I reminisce about Schutz:

"Oddly, when I was studying phenomenology with my tutor, Mario Presas, we
did Schutz, and I presented a term paper (if that's what it was) on
'relevance' and the etic-emic distinction."
 
i.e. Schutz is following Husserl. Presas spent most of his life studying
Husserl, and it was due to his assistant that he chose to lecture on
'phenomenology and the social sciences'. Only four students enrolled, yours truly
included. Schutz's stuff is boring, but he is into 'inner' participant
perspective on things, ethnomethodological stuff _avant la lettre_. He was
canonised by Americans when he settled in the USA (Manhattan) -- although
perhaps 'canonised' is not the politically correct word here.
 
"Schutz was possibly a genius! I KNOW my interest in Schutz was mainly due
to my TUTOR's interest in Schutz (you know, you need to get the good
grades), but I still keep that paper." Meaning: there's a lot of totalitarian
dictatorship in academia with tutors and staff having you READ things you
would rather not! (And writing critical papers on them!)
 
I wrote:

"She continues: ("She" is, some say, bad manners in this context -- As in
a film I saw, "She"? "Who are you referring to, a dog?" No, I'm referring
to A. Greenall)"
 
This is something that interests me. I think it was in "Cold Comfort Farm"
that I saw that remark. Or possibly "Love in a cold climate". ""She"?" "We
don't say 'she'". I think this is affirmative discrimination, for surely
'he' is not ungrammatical or rude in the way 'she' seems to be. That's why I
stick to saying "Wilson", "Sperber", "Speranza", etc. In today's newspaper,
a lesbian was reported as saying "In my first date I would invite him to a
glass of champagne". It struck me that the 'him' was lost in translation,
or vice versa. But I disgress.
 
Then followed the author's definition of "to flout", yes, as a pragmatic
technicism, for this is the Journal of Pragmatics (or something):
 
She writes: "Flouting, it is claimed, is merely one of many different
phenomena which, by virtue of being unusual/unexpected/unfamiliar against a
familiar background, generates imposed thematic relevance, a form of relevance
that causes heightened attention levels and increased interpretational
activity."
 
I wrote:
 
"Of course this re-definition (jargon!) is totally neo-Gricean."
 
The polemic on who is neo-, who paleo-, etc, amuses me since Attalardo
asked the query in this list. Surely she has a right to redefine, "If
philosophy generated no new problems it would be dead" Grice writes in "Prejudices
and predilections". This strikes me as a definition trying to combine and
concoct Schutz meets Grice meets Sperber and Wilson.
 
I wrote:

"Paleo-Griceans prefer to credit and honour Grice with 'playing' with
"flout" within philosophical moral theory."
 
I WANT to get 'paleo-Gricean' into a fashionable term. Not something to be
ashamed of! Of course the greatest paleo-Gricean of them all was
Protagoras!
 
I continued:
 
"Grice was obsessed (like Austin was) with 'rules' (rules of language,
rules of a game, etc.). A rule (and he refers to conversational maxims as
"conversational rules" at least once -- hence chapter vi of my PhD thesis) can
be followed or flouted."
 
-- Above I try to clarify the GRAMMAR of 'flout'. Agent A FLOUTS a
procedure. It's not clear that the Norwegian author is totally clear about that.
Not from the definition provided in her abstract above. It's a procedure that
 you flout. And what _is_ a procedure? An abstraction. You cannot flout
your going to the cinema. You can flout your going to the cinema regularly on
Saturdays. By going on a Sunday, say -- Presbyteriano Deo volente.
 
Basically, I expressed the view:
 
A procedure can be
 
     "followed -- said Witters, but Kripke objected. Cfr. Holtzman, On
Rule Following. Croom Helm"
 
There's a lot of scepticism as to what observable behaviour COUNTS as rule
following. Grice was aware of this. But students of implicature sometimes
take it for granted that this is a minor problem compared to the actually
MINOR one of 'flouting' a procedure.
 
     "or
     flouted"
 
I added:
 
"Martinich, a Russian emigre, has systematised flouting from a
philosophical perspective."
 
This he did in an essay in Philosophical Quarterly. I have reviewed
Martinich's neo-Gricean accounts elsewhere. He has an interesting response to Max
Black in a Dialectica article.
 
I wrote:
 
"To flout is NOT to 'opt out' a rule. It is slightly and subtly different.
You opt out sometimes "I cannot say more. My lips are sealed", Grice's
example. To flout is to BLATANTLY (as per trumpets) breach its operation. It is
one of those things that moved me to concentrate on 'strategies' rather
than 'rules' (my "German Grice: on conversational strategies and how to break
them", cited by Habermas in his "The pragmatics of communication", MIT)."
 
This was meant as sincere look for output. I am no longer sure I should
have concentrated on 'strategy' -- a term overused by people (not
philosophers!). For, etymologically, a 'strategy' is MEANT to 'destroy'. And the idea
of a 'coooperative' strategy is otiose if not downright self-contradictory.
But I learned this after reading all those Greek and Latin tracts on
military strategics (in the Loeb Classical Library -- a general (strategos) CAN
mislead only by using a 'strategy'. His overall goal may be coooperative --
e.g. when he misleads his own soldiers -- but a strategy is a downright lie!
 
In any case I later go on to say that Grice's idea of 'procedure' is
neutral enough. Ann Weiser (in "How to lie, some simple ways -- Chicago
Linguistics Society) I borrowed from the idea of strategy vs. strategem, but I no
longer find it charming. For Weiser, a strategem only is a covert procedure
(e.g. to lie). A strategy is a PUBLIC procedure. Recall, "Honesty is the
best strategy, policy, says I". etc. Of course I'm now totally Kantian and
think Grice was too, and that the basis of all this is MORALITY, not
interest-motivated utilitarianism!
 
I keep on quoting from the author:
 
"Using examples taken from weblogs (or so-called ‘blogs’), it is
demonstrated in detail what it means for flouting (and other, related forms of
non-observance of maxims)"
 
And I recognise that she honours the "Gricean" colocation of 'flouting' as
dealing with 'maxims' or procedure -- as was not clear from the quoted
definitions in terms of expectations of relevance.
 
I wrote: "she DOES see it as related to 'behaviour' -- odd that this
reference to the behaviour as 'stipulated' in some sort of 'procedure' as a rule
or maxim or strategy is, did not feature in her previous jargonisation."
 
Since it seems that the _genus_ is 'following' or 'not following' a
procedure. With not following as the species, as it were.
 
I add: "In fact, 'procedure' is the best Gricean neutral term for this, as
per WoW, vi, -- to have a basic/resultant procedure in one's repertoire."
 
Grice is not clear as to what he means by 'procedure' but the topic
fascinates me. Recall that Chomsky (and Searle, Intro to Searle 1971) saw Grice's
talk of 'procedures' as irreductibly behaviouristic. We needed Suppes (in
PGRICE) to set things right: Grice is being an "intentionalist", rather.
There's nothing 'behaviouristic' about procedures.
 
Since the Norwegian author dropped 'maxim' -- a term linguists associate
mainly if not only with Grice (in that hateful collocation, "Gricean
maxims"), I added a commentary on this loaded term as joked on by Grice:

I wrote:
 
""maxims" Grice played with. Chapman notes that a pet word for Grice while
in Oxford (just before he took the plane to deliver the WJL at Harvard) was
 'desideratum', or 'desiderata'".
 
And the connection is an intersting one. For there is a volitive element in
 both. But the 'desiderata' seem to be 'desiderata' or rationale of a pure
rational understanding. It's only goodwilled people whose desiderata _are_
desiderata proper. This is a topic of moral philosophy, rather.
 
I go on:

"Maxims is of course Grice's homage to Kant, and he'll go back to it in
"Aspects of reason" where he considers different types of 'imperatives', not
all of which are maxims. And it's within the maxims or counsels of prudence
that he sets to provide a universalisability criterion."
 
This is basic to Grice's thought as M. Sbisa made it clear in "Legacy of
Grice" paper in the San Marino conference. For Grice, the only possibly
universalisability criterion of the maxim is "if you want to be happy, then do
p!". It's the last John Locke on aspects of reason. And the argument
provided by Grice is a step by step one, and using quantified modal logic!
 
Since there is a lot of Kantian stuff here I added:
 
"In Pasos, ed. "The conversational Immanuel", I propose to follow Grice
seriously when he compares the maxims to the decalogue ("the 10 coms", Grice
writes, where "com" stands for 'commandments') constituting a
(Conversational) Immanuel (pun on Kant and manual, of course, for maxims need to be to
hand for our better moments.)
 
Oddly the conversational maxims are ALSO ten, hence my pun on the decalogue
 ("Do not be more informative", "Be as informative", "Say what you have
evidence for", "Do not say what you believe to be true", etc. -- they are ten
in number -- if you add "an extra maxim, to be added to the original set,
"Formulate your answer in an appropriate form", WoW, "Presupposition and
Conversational Implicature".
 
Of course, the idea of desiderata, maxims, manuals, and immanuals, has an
eschatological ring that Grice found a growing appeal for.
 
I continue to quote from the Norwegian author's abstract:
 
"to possess imposed thematic relevance: it is shown how different forms of
hearer response evidence heightened attention levels and increased
interpretational activity, and how the latter – rather than leading up to one,
easily circumscribeable implicature – potentially generates a number of
implicature hypotheses which may interact or compete for viability."
 
Reading this had me thinking that a hasty reader may 'infer' that for Grice
 'implicatures' are circumscribeable (a mouthful that one!) -- hence my
comment:
 
"Well, if this is 'neo', then Tacitus discovered America! For Grice
_defining_ 'implicature' involves indeterminacy. So the phantom of the
circumscribeable implicature is nowhere to be seen, in Grice, or Griceans, paleo- and
neo-." Indeterminacy is the litmus test of an implicature as Atlas is well
aware (his latest book with OUP).
 
I keep on quoting the Norwegian author:
 
"It is also shown how different forms of non-observance give rise to
different types of implicature or implications."
 
And leaving aside the 'implication' dropped in by the Norwegian author for
good measure (surely she meant 'disimplicatures' or entailments, for there
are no implications for Grice other than the oddly called 'material
implication' that 'if' stands for), I wrote:
 
"Well, non-observance is a nice 'trouser word' as Grice (in one of his
'artlessly sexist' moments, as he calls them in "Conception of Value", i, calls
 them)." This is a pet topic of mine. Negative affixes work as 'trouser
words' (the term is Austin's really) in that they diverge the reader's
attention to where it should NOT be diverged to. I might just as well define all
human beings as Americans and non-Americans. The whole point of having
'flout' is to be able to distinguish it from 'non-observance'. "non-", for a
logician like Grice and me can only be interpreted maximally. So I can say
that the moon non-observes the Coooperative Maxim (since she doesn't even
think it exists) -- so there's more to flout than non-observe. It's an
intentional, loaded, positive, rather than inocuously negative or privative 'term'.
 
 "Keywords: Paul Grice; Alfred Schutz; Cooperative Principle; Relevance;
Flouting; Implicature"
 
Is the list of keywords, which motivated me to send a ps on the connection
of the Coooperative Principle (another Gricean joke, 'principle' as opposed
to 'maxim' here) with 'flouting'.
 
I concluded the post with a summing up (of Bianco Posnet):
 
"But yes, the topic is hot. I especially get slightly irritated by authors
like Harnish/Bach or Leech who talk of 'direct' implicatures, 'trivial';
things Grice dismissed as Non-Implicatures. "It is raining, but I don't
believe it", Grice is serious about, is _not_ generated implicature-like, for,
well, 'trust, and belief-instilation' is in the 'nature' of the 'indicative
mode', as he loved to say!"
 
For surely there's more to flouting than opting out or non-observing. I'm
not observing "say what you believe to be true" when I lie. But I'm NOT
flouting the fourth 'maxim' -- for the Cooperative Principle enjoins that I
honour my partner's goal:
 
    A: Do you think this is a nice day for a picnic?
    B: It _is_! It's raining cats and dogs!
 
--- Irony counts as a flout of maxim 4 because we still honour A's goal of
ex-stilling info from B. If intelligent (but this is NOT circumscribeable)
B may come to think that B likes the mud (as I do!)
 
---
 
I ended with an exegetical note on Grice the Big Joker: "Oddly, G. P. Baker
 was right: Grice, the old flouter, the old skilful heretic, fought so well
and so aptly, that his heresies became heterodoxies. He who flouts first
flouts best." But what I meant was of course, was that the old flouter got
the last _laugh_!
 
Cheers
 
JLS
Received on Wed Dec 2 02:53:23 2009