Grice

[Matthew S Dryer]

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.

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

Matthew Dryer