You're wet/bleeding

[Zouhair Maalej]

Dear all,
I missed some mails in this thread, but I would like to comment on a couple
of ideas that emerged from this discussion. Apologies if I repeat what has
already been said.

I appreciate what Dena Attar said about the fact that if ever we do not
notice that the addressee is wet/bleeding, we would be guilty of social
indifference; this is social common sense in our interpersonal relations.
However, mentioning it in conversation is not a case of flouting of the
maxim of relation as Larry LaFond wants to argue. True, it is too obvious to
utter "You're wet/bleeding" to someone wet or bleeding. I tentatively would
like to venture an explanation for "You're bleeding" along indirect speech
acts, which are "cases in which one illocutionary act is performed
indirectly by way of performing another" (Searle, 1975: 60). Thus, in the
case of "You're bleeding" the utterance is a description of the addressee's
state of affairs (technically, an assertive which obviously has a
word-to-world direction of fit). This is the direct act through which
another but indirect one is being conveyed. My intuition is that the one
performed indirectly is using the direct as a response-eliciting act
(technically, either another assertive or expressive is being elicited
indirectly from the addressee). Rhetorically, the situation could be summed
up as follows: I, the speaker, am using language phatically (in Jakobson's
sense) to elicit an explanation/narrative from you, the addressee. The case
with "You're wet" is substantially different. With the indirect speech act
explanation still holding for "You're wet," Larry Lafond offered another
explanation he termed "economical," which turns out to be a form of
indirectness for politeness sake. As Matheson wrote, the solution lies in
Grice's famous distinction between "what is said" and "what is implicated"
or meant.

The second point relates to (flouting) maxims and Greg Matheson. Greg wrote:
"... what I want is a theory which allows communication to take place
without agreement on rules or maxims." I think, as far as my understanding
of Grice goes, this is precisely what Grice's theory is not precluding.
Grice's maxims provide a rational background (without meaning that verbal
communication is rational) against which conversational transactions can be
measured. The maxims provide us with one way of seeing how much of
communication can be irrational (i.e. non-conventional), and yet we do
manage against all odds to communicate. We may "violate" or "exploit" maxims
for our own interests; we may be faced with a "clash" between two maxims; or
we may "opt out" from conversation for some reason. But except for an
infinite number of people (e.g. informed pragmalinguists), as laymen we are
not aware of this maxim business. Greg can rest assured that we don't have
to agree on rules or maxims; it is our sharing the interest in the need to
communicate successfully that does the trick for us. It is what Sperber &
Wilson (1986-1995) wrapped up in Relevance that makes our tacit agreement a
fact that needn't be agreed upon.

I hope I haven't wasted your time.

Cheers

Dr Zouhair Maalej
Department of English, Chair
Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences,
Tunis-Manouba, 2010, Tunis, Tunisia.

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