[lit-ideas] Befehl ist Befehl
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 24 May 2010 22:49:36 EDT
In a message dated 5/24/2010 10:50:25 P.M., rpaul@xxxxxxxx writes:
I can't find where Lieutenant Calley, or any of his troops, said this.
At his trial, Calley said that he 'was only following orders (Captain
Medina's).'
----
The wiki essay that R. Paul referred to includes
"Befehl ist Befehel",
on which McEvoy, trying to be witty, would comment,
"But we knew that".
Thus triggering the implicature.
Grice considers:
"War is war"
"It may be thought that our addressee already knew that. To wit: that war
is war. Or that war was war. Yet, the totally otiosity of the remark may be
saved, under the circumstances, by virtue of the addressee thinking that
the utterer 'carries something under his or her sleeve' -- and not a card,
but the hypothesis, usually trivial, that everything is, as in love,
justified in war."
Or not.
J. L. Speranza, Bordighera
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