[lit-ideas] Grice's Yawn
- From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2011 10:59:08 EDT
Suppose someone yawns in front of you. Suppose he is Grice. You may be
able, on occasion, to draw the 'unwanted' implicature. If it is an implicature,
it is of course 'wanted' (an implicature is not like a baby, which can be
unwanted and yet a baby).
You may derive, "He is bored by what I say -- or something".
Yet, Grice was impressed by new developments in neurophysiology. So, what
he 'meant', perhaps, was that
Grice's system was displaying part of a thermoregulatory response in order
to cool the brain by shunting blood to Grice's facial muscles which thus
acted as radiators offloading heat from the redirected blood.
One may wonder why he would like to 'mean' that.
M. Green wrote on "Grice's Frown", brilliantly. Now, THAT is a cryptic case
by Grice. I was recently re-reading his "Meaning Revisited", and he has
this example,
"By that gesture he meant that he was fed up".
So, Grice was still using 'mean' without scare quotes -- unlike Stevenson,
who the early Grice worshipped.
This from today's New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/science/28qna.html
"As for why people yawn, “it is not entirely known,” Dr. Ebben said. “
However, the most recent data suggests that it is part of a thermoregulatory
response that helps cool the brain by shunting blood to facial muscles that
act as radiators and offload heat from the redirected blood.”"
----
To reconsider, then, using Grice's neologism, almost, of 'mean':
"That yawn meant-nn that he was fed up"
---- "I mean 'that gesture' in the use apt for communication" -- or
something, Grice has it.
----
"That yawn meant-nn that he was fed up."
Strictly, what that yawn 'meant' -- as Stevenson properly would have it in
scare quotes -- is something else:
"That yawn 'meant' that the system is displaying a
part of a thermoregulatory response
to help cool the brain
--- and that response is effected
by
shunting blood to the facial muscles
which act as radiators and
thus offload heat from the redirected blood."
Or something.
Speranza
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
