Is Yeats Griceian?
Is Yets Griceian in terms of ‘implicature’ or ‘explicature’? This is, even for
Yeats, a tricky question.
C. Iten, a language philosopher, considers the Griceian conversation:
A: Where are you from?
B: Why, what could she have done, being what she is? Was there another Troy for
her to burn?
Iten claims that B means that B is Irish. And perhaps B _is_. Implicatures
tend, unlike explicatures, to be cancellable, so, as Anti-Popper would say,
“you never know.” Or you do.
Cheers,
Speranza
