We are considering The Guardian’s rather sloppy utterance, as Grice’s Aunt
Matilda would qualify it,
i. Born in Japan, Ishiguro’s family moved to the UK when he
was five.
Ritchie says it is an ‘error,’ or rather looks for input re: that ‘error’,
including, a falsifier, Popperian, “Ritchie, that’s no error!’.
But it _is_. One day, Sir Geoffrey Warnock (sometime Vice-Chancellor at Oxford)
and H. P. Grice (university lecturer and tutorial fellow in philosophy at St.
John’s) were discussing the language of perception (“Have you noticed, Grice,
that we do say things like, “I heard the noise of a big thing”, but _rarely_,
“I saw a visum of a cow. We seem to be content with “I saw a cow.” I recall
distinctly Grice’s reply, “How clever language is!””. Warnock and Grice are
working under the assumption, made by J. L. Austin, that language is clever and
a wonder, and if the utterer at the Guardian makes this kind of what Grice’s
Aunt Matilda would call a crass mistake, it’s because the Guardian utterer is
not abiding by the cleverness that language displays.
McEvoy’s approach is different. He speaks of the ‘gist,’ and he forgives the
Guardian utterer for the ‘sloppiness’ (not McEvoy’s term), seeing that it is
not obvious that the utterer does not inform his addressee that Ishiguro’s
family, and not just himself (or his self, as Matilda would NOT say), was born
in Nagasaki.
The whole thing needs formalisation. If it’s a ‘syntactic’ error, as one may
have it – “grammar” is sometimes only ‘grammar schoolers’ use – and “grammar
schools” are not really _public_. Oxford philosophy is composed of philosophers
who went to public schools and are very sensitive to this type of ‘mistake’.
Gellner, a Frenchman, disqualified them as ‘futilitarians’ for this. Grice’s
strategy would be to translate The Guardian utterance to Greek; Warnock to
Latin. If “Born in Japan” applies to Ishiguro, we would have
B(I)
since ‘born’ is a monadic predicate.
If McEvoy is right that the implicature is that one is born ceteris paribus
where one’s family is born, we need set theory:
F = {I1, I2, I3}
where I1 means Ishiguro, I2 his father and I3 his mother. Then we apply “F”
(for ‘family’) to ‘born’ and believe the implicature is
(x) Ix & Bx
Ishiguro’s family (Ishiguro included) was born in Japan.
It is true that to say that
ii. Ishiguro was MOVED to the UK.
sounds gross. But perhaps ‘move’ is the wrong verb, too. McEvoy makes a point
that ‘when he was five’ is the focus – although, as Sir Peter Strawson once
said, ‘topics’ and ‘focus’ tend ‘to initiate an utterance, not finish it.’
(Thus: The Exhibition was visited by the king of France” does not presuppose
“There is a king of France,” while “The king of France wears a wig” does).
If the ‘error’ is syntactical, surely there are ways to correct it:
iii. Ishiguro was born in Japan. When he was five, he moved to the
UK.
and leave the Guardian intelligent addressee to abduce that his family did too,
or his nanny, or whatever. “He was moved to Japan” sounds patronizing, so it’s
better to leave the intentional verb, ‘move’ unspecified, and via implicature,
to assume that the addressee will calculate that somebody or other helped
Ishiguro with this move (if ‘help’ is the wrong verb).
Grice has gained fame by claiming that UTTERER’s meaning is basic, LANGUAGE
meaning is secondary. But in utterances like “How clever language is” (© Grice)
and in Austin’s idea of language as a marvel, we see a bit of change of
direction. After all, they were called members of the Oxford school of ordinary
LANGUAGE, not ‘languagers’.
McEvoy comments:
“Sources at the Yard [that is good, since there is no Yard than Scotland, so
it’s best to leave ‘Scotland’ at the level of the implicature – the yard was
called ‘Scotland’ because it was once, officially, part of Scotland] say that
Sir David of Ritchie, by rumour a pimpernel figure on the international stage
of grammatical disputes, never specified the character of the alleged "error".”
I think it’s safely to assume, to avoid that adjective beloved by Witters and
Ryle, ‘usage’ (vide Ryle’s symposium with Finley for the Aristotelian Society
on “Usage, Use, and Meaning”), to stick with ‘syntax’, as per Grice’s System G:
the syntax of a system involves the ‘formation rules’ – the ‘semantics’ the
interpretation, and the ‘pragmatics’ all that Bar-Hillel put in the waste
basket).
It is an ‘error’ in syntax as shown per the logical form involving the scope of
the predicate “B” (to be born in…) and the set-theoretical extension of the
class “family.” The utterance, sloppy as it stands, does DISIMPLICATE that
Ishiguro’s _nanny_ moved him to the UK – Nannies usually don’t count as ‘part
of the family’. (Did they have a pet that moved, too?)
McEvoy:
“[Speranza] may be right that it pertains to W's "depth grammar" (whatever that
is).”
Yes, but more constructively, it seems better to regard it as ‘syntactic.’ If
the error is one of syntax, it involves things like scope and stuff. Surely, a
syntactic error will bring a semantic error into the bargain. And a pragmatic
error. But the Guardian error’s source seems ‘syntactic’.
McEvoy:
“Other possibilities include that Sir David threw the error on the ground
unidentified, so headless chickens might peck at it for bystanders' amusement,
while he, agent provocateur, left pursued by a bear. Whether the truth will
out may hinge on the Slovenia result. Already Strachan's tactically surprised
everyone by taking field in a pink not seen on any males in Scotland between
the time Oscar Wilde lectured in Greenock in 1885 and the rise of cheap casual
leisure wear in twenty-first century Govan (Rod Stewart swanning around L.A. in
a leotard dis nae count).”
Well, another way to check is to see if “The Guardian” got comments from
readers, alla:
“Your utterance, “Born in Japan, Ishiguro’s family…” was strongly disliked by
my aunt Matilda. She believes it is UNDERSTOOD that his family was born in
Japan. So why say it?” Or: “Born in Japan, Ishiguro’s family…” is too brief to
be true.” Or: “Born in Japan, Ishiguro’s family…” makes you wonder if it’s not
the family who deserves the Nobel.” And so on.
Cheers,
Speranza
