[lit-ideas] Re: Counter-Suggestion
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2009 11:17:54 EDT
In a message dated 6/8/2009 10:44:41 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
pastone@xxxxxxxxx writes:
the 'good boy' started when he was about 8 months old
whenever he did something that we asked him to do. Now, it's just a
reaction that he "echoes" as you and Wilson say.
----
OK. Not to worry, but ...
Wilson's theory concerns 'irony', as I understand.
Brigitte Nehrlich (she is a psychologist working in Nottingham) shared with
me this scenario. She and her son were going out for a picnic. She is
German born, he was born in England. She said,
"What a lovely day!"
-- because it was raining (cats and dogs). So she meant it _ironically_.
For Wilson, irony is 'echoic' mention (or 'pretense') because we do use
utterances that _otherwise_ would have a different meaning.
"What a lovely day"
is used to express what a lovely day it is. In ironic remarks, you are
merely 'quoting', or 'echoing' or 'mentioning' the original utterance out of
context.
So, here we would need to adjust the 'echoic' use because P. A. Stone's son
is _not_ being 'ironic' when he says, "Good boy".
----
>He does it when we're not in the room.
>Whether or not he knows we can
>hear is another issue to consider.
Right. You can try placing a camcorder and assure that he thinks you are
both out of (hearing) reach -- say in the garden.
---
>Whether he actually knows what 'good
>boy' means is still another. I do know that he can already instantly
>identify verbs, nouns, objects, adjectives and adverbs from sentences,
>so his gleaning of "good boy" from my 'that's a good boy" or "you're a
>good boy" or the imperative "be a good boy" is telling that he does.
Right. Perhaps if you have a girl in the future and you say,
"Good girl"
there will be more options open. The scenario is best described by Geary,
"Psycholinguistic Data from Twins"
He experimented with two twins -- one female, one male -- in Indonesia. As
he notes, 'the male twin reacted differently to the _feminine_ pronouns."
---
Grice considers this in what he calls 'the shaggy dog' story (WOW, vi)
'shaggy' and 'dog' are his examples of 'predicative' and 'substantive'
positions in procedures in one's repertoire.
'the dog is shaggy'
'the boy is good'
'the girl is good'
As P. A. Stone notes, that's only _one_ procedure. There may be a few more
_resultant_ procedures (versus basic) in the repertoire:
1. That's a good boy.
2. You're a good boy.
3. Be a good boy
>is telling that he does.
I think the term here is 'pivotal'. In the early stages, it's two pivots
working
so
good boy
works just fine.
I was recently watching the Tony Awards from yesterday, and the hit number
in "Guys and Dolls" set in the Salvation Army has the line,
"you bad bad bad bad girl"
---- So, as Beatriz Lavandera -- a mentor of linguistics in Argentina --
would stress,
it's the options open:
good
He is a { } boy
bad
It takes a Michael Jackson to _invert_ the meaning procedure here:
iff he is a bad boy, he is a good boy.
etc.
There are things to consider for the different formulae. P. A. Stone is
right in looking for the 'propositional content'.
'Good boy'
would be "incomplete" -- but cfr. Geary's poetry.
A whole _thought_ (Fregean thought) has to be saturated, as they say. Robyn
Carston who is a recent mother, studied this in "Thoughts and Utterances".
In her website (UCL) she has a photo of her baby holding a copy of her
book, which is very cute.
----
i. That's a good boy
ii. You're a good boy
iii. Be a good boy
I agree that one should reinforce good behaviour, so we won't expect, to
echo Chomsky, that the child will be exposed statistically to the equivalent
number of:
That's a bad boy (with a frown)
You're a bad boy (with an angry look)
Don't be a bad boy (with a raised eyebrow)
and cfr. M. Green, "Grice's Frown".
---
One may wonder about the pragmatics of 'compliments', or what I call
'exclamatives'
p!
That's a beautiful dress!
Beautiful dress!
So, "Good boy" could only implicaturally -- if at all -- may be said to
spring from a deep structure of an explicit shaggy-dog structure. The problem
is to report in oratio obliqua what the child means when he says, "Good
boy".
As P. Stone notes, if we analyse this in terms of (Gricean) communicative
intentions, we need a that-clause:
He means that he is a good boy.
i. he means that that (i.e. this) is a good boy (report for i)
ii. he means that he _is_ a good boy (report for ii)
iii. he means that he is to keep being a good boy (report for iii).
Oddly, 'good' does not feature in Spanish, so cannot know. But 'good' food,
good programme, good walk, good ... It's the most vacuous of words.
I recall I was once providing my oral examination for ethics. And I chose
the example by Geach, in Philippa Foot, "Theories of Morals".
Geach (in a symposium with I think Smart -- Aristotelian Society)
considers
That is a good x.
In a way, Geach notes, it's possible to provide the logical form of that
utterance -- imperatival in nature, McEvoy would say.
And it's possible to provide that without _knowing_ the meaning of the
'sememe' 'x.
Geach uses something like
rhadiokritometer
--
A good rhadiokritometer is good if it performs what a rhadiokritometer is
meant to perform aptly.
A boy is good iff ...
So here we need to reconsider what Grice calls a 'dossier' -- studied by G.
Evans in Varieties of Reference.
In the description,
'the good boy' (definite description)
or
'a good boy' (indefinite)
the utterer is displaying some access to a _dossier_ of what counts as a
good boy.
Alas, Aristotle analysed 'good man', rather than 'good boy'.
Cheers,
J. L. Speranza
Buenos Aires, Argentina
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