[lit-ideas] Re: Griceian Chickens
- From: david ritchie <profdritchie@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 7 Dec 2015 10:55:37 -0800
On Dec 7, 2015, at 4:46 AM, (Redacted sender "Jlsperanza" for DMARC)
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In a message dated 12/7/2015 1:06:39 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
profdritchie@xxxxxxxxx writes:
"[M]y mind decided to tackle the problem of what Scottish chickens might
be named if I owned some. People in Glasgow call women, “hen.” “It’s
down the road a wee way; you’ll find it on the left, hen.” Maybe they’d
call
hens, “hen” too?"
I think that you would then have a reverse implicature. The Glasgweian idea
seems to be that the use of 'hen' to refer "HUMAN ♀" may be considered a
metaphor, figure of speech or thought, or implicature (Grice's example,
"You're the cream in my coffee". By calling a hen a hen, you'd be close to
Huxley's tautological statements that "pigs are rightly called pigs," or
something (or as Grice prefered, "Rightly are grices called grices" -- a
grice is
an extinct Scottish pig).
So the right idea—if symmetry is abroad in the world-- would be for chickens to
call each other humans? As a god, I might take that to be blasphemy. Or make
an exception.
Different subject. I read three newspapers on the plane. In one, a reader had
asked some columnist if he (the reader) was too old (mid-forties) to begin
reading Wodehouse. That gave me plenty to ponder. The argument was that (said
inquirer) had seen sophisticates at his school reading Wodehouse when he
(inquirer’s youthful self) was into thrillers and who knows what else? Now
that he (most of the above) had reached a maturer vision of things, was it too
late to “get” Wodehouse? This is the kind of baffling question that calls for
a brain raised on fish, but none was available on that flight. What did the
columnist advise? Begin reading without further delay.
Sound man.
David Ritchie,
in gloom and rain in
Portland, Oregon
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