McEvoy:
"my Ireland v Ireland final prophecy is coming true."
Oddly, Grice analysed the implicatures of this. His example is England cricket.
According to Grice when we say that
i. England defeated Australia.
in cricket, the implicature trades on the sense of 'represent'. It just
happened that a bunch of Englishmen defeated a bunch of Australians on some
playing fields (not Eton), say. McEvoy's use of
ii. Ireland v Ireland
trades on the same implicature. It would not be illogical that a bunch of
Irishmen defeated another bunch of Irishmen. What WOULD be, for Grice, a
logical contradiction, is that if this bunch of Irishmen is 'representing'
Ireland (i.e. the Republic of Ireland), it would be impossible (analytically)
that this bunch of Irishmen defeated themselves.
On the other hand, since for Grice 'Ireland' is aequivocal (and "Ulster" is
used by Grice to cancel the implicature invited by the 'aequi-vocality' of
"Ireland"), it may well be the case that we have
iii. Ireland v Ulster
For short, I'll call this Grice's prophecy.
Note that 'v' is used both in sports and in Hart's philosophy of law (Regina v
Regina). As Hart notes: "The use of 'Regina v Regina' implicates that one of
the Reginae is not the Regina Angliae, queen of England. For surely the queen
would not sue herself, unless she must. I owe this point to Grice, a member of
my play group at dear old Oxford."
Cheers,
Speranza
