[lit-ideas] The Number of Conversational Maxims

In a message dated 2/26/2009 1:58:06 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
You could blog.  You could write  privately in a journal.  You could  
observe and then draw.   You could work in a lab, become an economist,  
ask your grandma what  she experienced.  Or you could count things in  
your life and  display them, for all to see, in pie charts and  graphs:

http://www.daytum.com/

David Ritchie,
once again  learning from students 
-----

That is excellent! Thanks, David  Ritchie.
I just logged in there two.
I had to choose a field so I  typed,

"Conversational Maxims"

I  spent my PhD dissertation counting them. For Grice they are 4.

What's  more, they _have_ to be four, he says.

Why??? Oh, Why???

Well, his  argument is Ariskantian, as he calls it ("Ariskant" is the 
sobriquet S. R.  Chapman, married to C. Routledge -- makes public in her book 
on 
Grice -- now in  paperback!).

For Aristotle, the first four categories were _four_ and  only four:

substance
quality (poiotes)
quantity  (posotes)
relatio  (not to be confused with Gk. anaphora but lit. the  same thing re = 
ana; latio, 'phora')

Now, Kant was sleeping his dogmatic  slumber -- Someone from Greyfriars Bobby 
Country woke him up. He wrote down  _four_ and only four  categories:

qualitas
quantitas
relatio
modus

In 1967,  Grice (who had been lecturing on Aristotle and Kant for some time)  
said,

"I would like, to echo Kant [and Aristotle --JLS] speak of four  categories 
here" (the 'echoing Kant' is  _literal_):

QUANTITITAS
Make your conversational move  informative enough

QUALITITAS
make your conversational  move _genuine_

RELATIO
make your conversational move so  that it relates to _life_.

MODUS
make your conversational  move one that is _cute_.


---- Since then, linguists and philosophers  have tried to _augment_ or 
_reduce_ the number of categories, just for  fun.

Sperber/Wilson for example, think it's just _one_: relatio
Horn  thinks it's two ('dual model of comprehension', alla Zipf)
Leech thinks they  are _countless_.

---- Some have been more, er,  categorial:

Levinson thinks they _are_ four.

Now that's as far as  "maxims" are concerned. As far as sub-maxims, I counted 
 "9"


Supra-maxim QUANTITY: make your conversational move informative  enough
submaxim: And I repeat: as informative
submaxim: but no _more_ informative.
Supra-maxim QUALITY: make your  converastional move _genuine_
submaxim: try not to make a false  one
submaxim: try not to make a silly one
Supramaxim of  RELATIO: make it relate to _life_.
-
-
Supramaxim MODUS: make it a cute one
And here Grice does go  asymmetrical -- he lists four
submaxim: avoid  ambiguity
submaxim: be brief
submaxim: avoid  obscurity
submaxim: be orderly

When I was writing my PhD  dissertation, I came across Grice, WOW, 
'Presupposition and conversational  implicature' where he writes, casually, as 
he always 
did, as he always  should,

"Add, if you like for good  measure, an extra maxim -- but then again  don't,
to the  effect,
make your contribution such that  it is easy to reply to it" (words to that 
effect).

I took his advice,  "feel free to add them to 'principle' as yet another 
submaxim of  manner.

So I re-counted the maxims, and I cheated it slightly when I  turned the 
submaxim of relation that he never expand on as being identical to  the 
supramaxim 
of realation. The arithmetics:

Supra-maxim QUANTITY: make  your conversational move informative enough
1. submaxim: And I  repeat: as informative
2. submaxim: but no _more_  informative.
Supra-maxim QUALITY: make your converastional move  _genuine_
3. submaxim: try not to make a false  one
4. submaxim: try not to make a silly one
Supramaxim of  RELATIO: make it relate to _life_.
-
-
5. 
Supramaxim MODUS: make it a cute one
And here Grice does go asymmetrical -- he lists four
6.  submaxim: avoid ambiguity
7. submaxim: be brief
8. submaxim: avoid obscurity
9. submaxim: be  orderly


10.  make your contribution tidy.

----

(Grice does use numerals, 1, 2;  1, 2; 1, 2, 3, 4 -- in the original 1967 
Lecture -- i.e. he does display the  numerals 1 and 2 for 'quantity', 1 and 2 
for 
quality, and 1, 2, 3, 4, for  'modus').

So I counted again, and it was _ten_.

So I said, -- as I  was getting a bit bored of writing my PhD dissertation -- 
I'm going to label  that the 'decalogue' -- and I did. And some of _that_ 
stuff got published! (for  good or bad)

Anyway, when re-reading Chapman's book, I noticed that Grice  also used the 
numeral "10", but in his case, in relation to Moses and the, er,  commandments. 
He does write (on the other side of a 'statement-of-account' --  Bank of 
California): "Perhaps Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai more than the 10  
comms" 
[sic].

Cheers,

J. L. Speranza
 
 
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