Grice

[Ellen F. Prince]

Matthew Dryer wrote:

>I too agree with Ellen Prince re the Gricean maxims.  But I can't resist
>the temptation of commenting that I can easily imagine an outsider reading
>this conversation on Funknet and wondering how some of Ellen's comments
>conformed to the maxim of relevance.  I can only draw the inference that
>she is interpreting some of the messages in this conversation as
>implicating that some of the people who have made serious comments about
>violations to Gricean maxims also believe that violations to Gricean
>maxims are somehow violations to Gricean theory, which, as both Mira and
>Guo have pointed out, is not the case.  On rereading the messages, I'm not
>convinced that these messages do implicate that, so I can only infer that
>Ellen has found in the past that so many linguists mistakenly think that
>violations to Gricean maxims are somehow a problem for Gricean theory that
>some of the people who have sent messages in this conversation must be
>mistaken about that.  And she may be right.

Um, IIRC, the original post said (or 'presupposed') that trials and
something else 'do not follow or are not expected to follow the
Gricean maxims' -- or something to that effect. (Wow, we don't
presume any non-random relationship between what a witness says and
what s/he believes?!? If that's true, how extraordinary that we should
even have trials! It would be cheaper to ask the nearest parrot for
testimony or even the verdict. ;) ) Later posts invoked various pieces
of research purporting to show that such-and-such culture does not
follow the Maxims. One post said they 'reflect primarily European male
discourse.' Since I am not aware of any findings that European males
communicate more than others by (non-logical) implicature, I must infer
that the poster believes the theory to be quite different from what you
and I have in mind. Anyway, you see that I am not able to interpret most of
the thread the way you suggest, tho I wish I could... :(

>And I certainly cannot imagine going through any of this reasoning if
>Gricean theory (or some variation) weren't right.

On that I agree 100%! ;)