You're wet/bleeding

[Larry LaFond]

Greg queries whether the two examples he cites below provide ammunition for
an attack
on Gricean theory of conversational implicature?  I don't believe they do.
Although both instances flaunt the maxim of relation, forcing a marked
inference, that is precisely what the speaker intends.  For example, in the
first instance the hearer hears the utterance 'You're wet!' and reasons
thus..."Although the speaker has said something that is true (conforming to
the quality maxim) this comment hardly appears relevant because it is so
blatantly obvious.  But assuming the speaker is rational and 'cooperative',
the relevance must rest in something other than the traditional
interpretation.  You're wet could be a polite way of telling me not to stand
on this airport's carpet in my condition, an economical way of telling me
both to move and why I should move in the same utterance.  But in this case
the woman's tone of voice and facial expressions do not support such a
meaning.  I am left to conclude that woman that has made a marked choice
that intentionally violates this maxim to emphasize her sympathy or concern.
She has done this with an economy of words, also satisfying the quantity and
manner maxims."  The point, of course, is not that maxims cannot be
violated; rather, that when they are violated they are done so to invoke
nonstandard, marked interpretations of utterances.

Larry LaFond
University of South Carolina
lllafond at mindspring.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Greg Matheson" <gregyoko at PCMAIL.COM.TW>
To: <DISCOURS at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>
Sent: Tuesday, July 25, 2000 11:38 AM
Subject: You're wet/bleeding



> One was when I walked through a typhoon to the airport and the
> woman at the check-in counter greeted me with the statement, "You're
> wet!" or "You're all wet!" I can't remember the exact words. I can
> remember this made me feel warm inside, but I also remember thinking
> about it later perhaps and wondering how you would explain it in
> terms of the Gricean maxim to be as informative as required, but no
>  more informative than required.
>
> Being told I was wet did not tell me anything I didn't know at all, but
> I did not feel it was odd, or  that I could respond with something like,
> "Don't you know there's a typhoon outside?" or "Am I? I didn't notice."
> or "No. This is the new look." But I couldn't put my finger on why it
> wasn't odd.
>
> The other example was in a textbook where one of the characters comes
> home after a motorcycle accident to get some money before going to
> the hospital and the other character greets him with the words, "You're
> bleeding!" This also is not informative. Why does the other character say
it?
>
> I don't have any examples from native speakers, but it seems to me this
> kind of thing is that it is something they say too. I searched some
on-line
> corpuses but couldn't find any examples.
>
> So, what do I do with this. Is there ammunition here for an attack
> on Gricean theory of conversational implicature?