[lit-ideas] It Goes Without Showing
- From: "" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" for DMARC)
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 14 May 2014 19:16:56 -0400 (EDT)
In a message dated 5/14/2014 6:45:21 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx writes:
It seems that Donal is going into lingiustic philosophy as well.
quoting:
"No, it's not. It's not. It's really not.*
This construction may be an example, btw, of one that shows its sense -
and where it would miss that sense to interpret it merely as a set of
"otiose" repetitions. (We may say the sense it shows is, in part, one where
writing imitates a common aspect of speech, where speech sometimes shows this
kind of repetitious emphasis.)"
One problem here is that what McEvoy states the thing _shows_ he manages to
_say_.
Actually, the 'dictiveness' (versus what I call the 'ostensiveness') is
accountable in terms of conversational implicature. One 'maxim' goes:
do not be more informative than is required.
But McEvoy's utterance was, inter alia,
It's not. It's not.
It may be argued that the second 'it's not' is over-informative, and
indeed, to quote McEvoy's, 'repetious[ly] emphatic' if not an 'otiosity'. But
'conversational implicatures' are ESPECIALLY _triggered_ when maxims such as
those are _flouted_. On the other hand, while if Witters wants to give a
mystic status to 'what is shown' because it 'cannot be said', that remains
some sort of 'wishful thinking' wherever we find ways of _saying_ what is
_shown_.
Cheers,
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:
