[lit-ideas] Re: Brechtiana
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 14:52:10 +0100
I wouldn't think that it is 'conversational implicature' since the
ambiguity is semantic, i.e. future tense is often ambiguous that way. For
example, a Serbian nationalist politician Vojislav Šešelj predicted in the
beginning of the 1990s a civil war in which "rivers of blood, will flow."
He now claims (on trial in the Hague) that it was a factual use of 'will'
(prediction), while the prosecution argues that it was an intentional use
(announcing plans or threatening). Okay, I'll not go on about this, the
point is that the future tense is inherently ambiguous.
O.K.
On Wed, Oct 29, 2014 at 2:06 PM, Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
>
> >As Grice notes, Brecht (and indeed the Finance Minister of Denmark) is
> exploiting the conversational implicature triggered by the modal
> ambiguity in
> expressions of the future tense, i.e. between the mere future indicated or
> factual and the thing the Finance Minister is involved with, the 'future'
> that
> Grice calls 'intentional'.>
>
> Come now, everyone.
>
> D
>
>
> On Wednesday, 29 October 2014, 12:25, "dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <
> dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
> In a message dated 10/28/2014 7:21:26 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
> torgeir_fjeld@xxxxxxxx writes:
> As you may know he famously fled Germany in the 1930s, lived in Denmark
> for a number of years, before taking refuge in the US, where he was
> marshalled before the Committee of Un-American activities during the
> McCarthy-regime.
>
> Oddly, back in Oxford, Brecht was Grice's bedside favourite reading.
>
> He would often quote from "Flüchtlingsgespräche".
>
> Grice was fascinated by Brecht's prose. He quotes in full from Brecht,
> when
> Brecht recalls:
>
> Denmark was at one time plagued by a succession of corrupt finance
> ministers.
>
> To deal with this situation, a law was passed in Denmark requiring
> periodic
> inspection of the books of the Finance Minister.
>
> The odd (Griceian) thing is that the Finance Minister, when visited by
> the
> inspectors, said to them:
>
> 'If you inspect my books,
> I shall not continue to be your finance minister.'
>
> Grice found the implicature a delight.
>
> As it happened, the inspectors retire in a bit of a confusion.
>
> Only eighteen months later, Grice recalls, it was discovered that the
> Finance Minister had spoken nothing other than the literal truth.
>
> As Grice notes, Brecht (and indeed the Finance Minister of Denmark) is
> exploiting the conversational implicature triggered by the modal
> ambiguity in
> expressions of the future tense, i.e. between the mere future indicated
> or
> factual
> and the thing the Finance Minister is involved with, the 'future' that
> Grice calls 'intentional'.
>
> "On top of that, the Finance Minister's use of the conditional is doubly
> implicatural in nature."
>
> "The ambiguity," Grice notes, extends beyond the first person form of the
> tense".
>
> There is, indeed, a difference between
>
> 'There will-F be light' (future factual) and
>
> 'There will-I be light' (future intentional).
>
> "God might have uttered the second sentence while engaged in the
> Creation",
> Grice notes -- "provided of course, he was an Englishman".
>
> "Sensitive Englsh speakers (which most of us are not) may be able to mark
> this
> distinction by discriminating between 'shall' and 'will', Grice regrets.
>
>
> "'I shall-I go to London'
>
> stands to
>
> 'I intend to go to London'
>
> analogously to the way in which
>
> 'Oh for rain tomorrow!'
>
> stands to
>
> 'I wish for rain tomorrow'."
>
> Unlike Brecht, Grice was a personalist.
>
> "Just as NO ONE *ELSE* can say JUST what *I* say when I say "I shall-I go
> to London".
>
> "If someone else says, "Grice will go to London", he will be expressing
> his, not my, intention that I shall go."
>
>
> The asymmetries marked by the wiki entry for the future may confuse
> people
> slightly.
>
> "Shall and its subjunctive "should" implicate obligation or determined
> intent when used in the second person and its plural, but implicate a
> simple
> future meaning in the first and third.
>
> On the other hand, "will" and its subjunctive form "would" implicate,
> wish
> or intent for the future, other than in the first and third person, in
> which it implicates obligation or determined intent.
>
> Otherwise, it is used as the most neutral form and it is the most
> commonly
> used.
>
> The implicature, in a sign such as
>
> Trespassers shall be prosecuted.
>
> is then what Grice calls 'protreptic' and not merely 'exhibitive' (of the
> utterer's intentions).
>
> Cheers,
>
> Speranza
>
>
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