[lit-ideas] Re: Because Implicature
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 4 Jan 2014 10:34:28 -0800 (PST)
I am fairly sure that this usage is taken from Chinese English, or Chinglish as
some like to call it. Not very elegant, but intelligible nevertheless - at
least, I cannot think of a context in which it would cause misunderstanding off
the top of my head.
O.K.
On Saturday, January 4, 2014 4:18 PM, "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" <Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx>
wrote:
From today's World Wide Words:
"Words of 2013."
"The American Dialect Society continued its tradition of voting for its
Word of the Year at its annual conference, held this year in Minneapolis."
"The winner was a curious choice:
"because X," where
"X" is a noun or noun phrase *without* the intermediate of that would be
expected in _standard_ English."
Examples:
“because homework”, “because internet”.
Speranza's examples:
"Because Implicature"
"Because Grice".
"In such phrases, most often encountered online, "because" has changed" --
as Grice would say -- "from a conjunction to a preposition"
thus complicating what Grice calls its logical form.
"It may suggest [or implicate -- Speranza] the logic behind the reasoning
is too poor to survive exposure or the reason is so obvious the speaker [or
utterer, as Grice prefers -- Speranza] doesn’t need to elaborate."
""The version found most often is
"because reasons,"
a hand-waving way of saying that the speaker [or utterer -- Speranza] doesn
’t want or need to explain."
It may be that the Griceian conversational maxim is alleged to be 'under
control': "do not say what you lack adequate reasons for".
""Because X "had also been chosen as "Most Useful Word of the Year" [where
the implicature is not Witters's -- 'meaning is use', meaning should be
useful -- Speranza], beating "struggle bus", a difficult situation, as in
"I’m riding the struggle bus"."
But cf. Speranza's
"Because Struggle Bus".
"It is likely that journalists will have a struggle bus telling their
readers why because X won (try “because language”, guys)."
Cheers
Speranza
World Wide Words is copyright © Michael Quinion 2014.
http://www.worldwidewords.org.
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