[lit-ideas] Griceian Idiosyncrasies
- From: "" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" for DMARC)
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2014 08:20:25 -0500
In a message dated 11/23/2014 2:22:38 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx writes:
Well, this seems to me like an issue of lingustic pragmatics -
specifically, of English usage - that is not very important philosophically.
And
falling back on 'idiolects' seems to me rather disingenious. If linguistic
philosophy makes any sense at all (which I consider doubtful) it can only be
by
virtue of shared lingustic intuitions. There is empirical research that
deals with this, and at least covers more than one or three or four users of a
language. Again, the philosophical issue of the nature of knowledge, for
example, cannot be reduced to such lingustic intuitions, and it is not going
to be resolved by them.
We may play here with 'idiom' and 'idiosyncrasy'. The Etymology Online
gives:
idiosyncrasy (n.)
c.1600, from French idiosyncrasie, from Greek idiosynkrasia "a peculiar
temperament," from idios "one's own" (see idiom) + synkrasis "temperament,
mixture of personal characteristics," from syn "together" (see syn-) + krasis
"mixture" (see rare (adj.2)). Originally in English a medical term meaning
"physical constitution of an individual." Mental sense first attested
1660s.
idiom (n.)
1580s, "form of speech peculiar to a people or place," from Middle French
idiome (16c.) and directly from Late Latin idioma "a peculiarity in
language," from Greek idioma "peculiarity, peculiar phraseology," from
idioumai
"to appropriate to oneself," from idios "personal, private," properly
"particular to oneself," from PIE *swed-yo-, suffixed form of root *s(w)e-,
pronoun of the third person and reflexive (referring back to the subject of a
sentence), also used in forms denoting the speaker's social group, "(we
our-)selves" (cognates: Sanskrit svah, Avestan hva-, Old Persian huva "one's
own," khva-data "lord," literally "created from oneself;" Greek hos "he, she,
it;" Latin suescere "to accustom, get accustomed," sodalis "companion;" Old
Church Slavonic svoji "his, her, its," svojaku "relative, kinsman;" Gothic
swes "one's own;" Old Norse sik "oneself;" German Sein; Old Irish fein
"self, himself"). Meaning "phrase or expression peculiar to a language" is
from
1620s.
Grice plays with the Greek root 'idio-' in "Logic and Conversation". He
does think (and I agree with him) that as far as 'meaning' is concerned, it
can be idiosycratic. He uses 'idiolect'. His example is himself designing a
new Highway Code while lying on a bath. A recently example I found which is
NOT idiosyncratic, but almost, is the code language devised by Julius
Caesar when sending cryptograms to his troops during the war in Gallia.
In any case, it looks like one CAN use 'mean' as connected with a
particular expression used by an individual.
It was C. A. B. Peacocke, and others, later, at Oxford, who did try to
progress from Grice's idiosyncratic phase (when an expression E means that p
for individual utterer U, or rather Utterer U means that p by uttering E) to
the much more general (or abstract*, as Suppes would say) idea of what
anything means in a language, such as, say, English.
I think Stampe and others called this 'nominalism', because it starts with
the individual utterer and the individual one-off expression and proceeds
to 'collective' uses and 'shared intentions', and such.
Cheers,
Speranza
* The idea of 'abstraction' relates to Suppes.
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