In his fifth William James lectures on implicature, Grice considers the
difference between what an idiom (like 'pushing up the daisies) is and what
is not ('fertilising the daffodils'). And then there's the bucket.
One test for an implicature of the figurative kind is that surely the
expression had to been used first NON-FIGURATIVELY (as in Grice's example,
"You're the cream in my coffee"). While Grice sticks to 'push up the daisies',
there's 'kick the bucket', another idiom (of sorts).
Indeed, the expression was first used NON-FIGURATIVELY, i.e. to make a true
remark (it is used 'figuratively' when it flouts Grice's maxim, 'be
truthful').
When a butcher slings up a sheep or pig, after killing, he fastens to the
hocks of the animal what is technically known in the trade as a gambal, a
piece of wood curved somewhat like a horse’s leg.
In Norfolk, England, this is also known as a bucket.
To kick the bucket, then, is the sign of the sheep's or pig's being dead,
As Grice notes, it may reasonably be objected that the sheep or pig could
NOT, truthfully, possibly kick the bucket, as the sheep or pig would be
already dead by the time that its rear legs were fastened to it. ("But
implicatures invite little mysteries like that; and they are all ways
cancellable,
mind", he wisely advises).
Strawson objected how a specialist Norfolk dialect expression has come to
be so widely taken up. Grice's response was:
"Why not?" (He loved Sandringham! and found Norfolk -- 'very flat, Norfolk'
-- ideal for his favourite sport, cricket).
Cheers,
Speranza
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