Avoid Unnecessary Prolixity

[joyeuse13]

If anyone's interested, I'll be posting some of my class notes this semester. First up, Dr. Salvatore Attardo's lecture on

Gricean Implicature

Neo-Gricean Pragmatics

Was Grice only thinking about English?

Two schools of thought:

1)       White male western philosopher - so only English, probably British.  Studies of other languages where his

Comments

[stoutfellow]

One thing I've always been curious about is, as mentioned, the possibility that Gricean principles only apply to English. The only bit of information I recall hearing on this is a half-remembered suggestion that Malagasy operates on different principles. If your professor mentions anything substantive, I'd love to hear about it. (In particular, if Malagasy - or whatever - doesn't use these principles, what do they use? Levinson's book on the subject convinced me that something has to be there, whether it's Gricean or not.)

[joyeuse13]

I think Dr. A was espousing option 2) above--that it's less about language and more about rationality. All cultures are rational by their own lights.

[stoutfellow]

Mm. That still leaves open the possibility of different means of achieving the same rational goal. (I'm always suspicious of universalistic claims as regards language.) Still, if Dr A dismisses the possibility, there's no point in pressing the issue. (That's an admonition to me, not to you.)