[lit-ideas] Re: Judicial Language: Its Use and Misuse
- From: "Donal McEvoy" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "donalmcevoyuk" for DMARC)
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2016 14:09:34 +0000 (UTC)
(The 'exchange of insults' was notably not reported by either The Telegraph or
The Times, never mind The New York Times).>
The story was reported in the Telegraph,
Swearing judge launches four-letter response after being abused by racist
defendant in court
| |
| | | | | | | |
| Swearing judge launches four-letter response after being...A judge launched
an expletive-laden response when a racist thug hurled abuse at her in court. |
| |
| View on www.telegraph.co.uk | Preview by Yahoo |
| |
| |
as to The Times that is behind a paywall I don't breach.
What's notable is factual inaccuracy combined with confident assertion.
DL
From: "dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, 16 August 2016, 14:47
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Judicial Language: Its Use and Misuse
It should be remembered that McEvoy initially wrote that his essay, "Judicial
language: its use and misuse" "is not going well" (while admitting the topic
'beats poetry' anyday). The implicatures of 'is not going well' are various.
One may be that he was abroad while working on it, while in another post he
writes that he is familiar with the Hennigan type -- so perhaps he should have
NOT gone abroad -- McEvoy will say that what he STATED is that he was 'away'
from the list, not from where he currently is. Another implicature, perhaps
more Griceian, is that Lynch is MISUSING judicial language.
In his recent post, McEvoy expands on Lynch's first utterance of the quatruplet:
i. "You are a [four-letter word] yourself."
but minimises with his (usual?) tirade against Oxonian language philosophers of
the Griceist type (including, of course Grice, whose friend, H. L. A. Hart, was
temporarily a lawyer -- "until I decided to become a philosopher"), and writes:
"There is ... something interesting in how adding "yourself" changes the sense
of "You are a bit of a [four-letter word]", interesting from the point of view
of understanding the intricacies of sense - the "yourself" might add a
colloquial flavour."
Indeed, also it may be inappropriate lingo coming from a judge, whatever his
surname. The tirade against Griceist philosophers McEvoy engages is is
Popperian in nature. A conclusion to "Judicial language: its use and misuse"
seems to end with a critical reflection on how English law is in need of
'critical evaluation,' to use McEvoy's phrase. But it may be exaggerated, in
that Grice learned a lot from Austin, and Austin distinguished between:
a) locutionary acts ("You are a [four-letter word] yourself") -- themselves
analysed into: 'phonic', 'phatic', and 'rhetic' sub-acts.
b) illocutionary acts ("I hereby state that you are a [four-letter word]
yourself").
and, notably
c) perlocutionary acts ("I hereby insult you by telling you that you are a
[four-letter word] yourself").
Grice denied the triad. Wilson (in "Grice's Ultimate Counterexample", in Nous)
approached Grice with this, and the dialogue went:
Wilson: You confuse illocutionary with perlocutionary acts.
Wilson writes, "If I recall correctly, Grice's repartee was, "I may be
mistaken, never confused."
For Grice, ALL utterances are analysed in terms of the intended effects on the
part of the utterer to affect his addressee, so he found Austin's triad otiose.
But in the case of 'insult', Grice found "I hereby insult you by telling you
that you are a [four-letter] word" PLAIN illogical. For while one can intend to
insult, to be insulted is a 'perlocutionary effect.' McEvoy has a footnote to
this effect, which may perhaps be expanded.
In another context, McEvoy referred to a counterpart to the Hennigan/Lynch
exchange:
ii. H: You're a liar!
L: You're a liar yourself!
This is what I call the Griceian version of the Epemenides paradox. It involves
a violation of Goedel -- i.e. his theorem. In the case of the actual exchange:
iii. H: You are a [four-letter word].
Judge L: You are a [four-letter] word yourself.
the implicature may be that since H is a [four-letter word] for Judge Lynch,
cannot utter 'truths', while SHE can. Hence the emphasis, rather than mere
added 'colloquial flavour' that McEvoy refers to.
It might be argued that
i. You are a [four-letter word] yourself.
as uttered by Judge Lynch is volunteered, and not necessary for the exchange.
Hennigan has been convicted, and anything that follows from the judge may count
as a 'misuse'. McEvoy takes a different stand and considers that Lynch's
implicature is to note that Hennigan's lingo is, to use McEvoy's words, not
'helpful', i.e., in Griceian parlance, non-cooperative. But Hennigan (and
Lynch) knew that -- after all, it was all about an ASBO --. So perhaps it was
an ancestor of Grice who inventend these.
In his Lectures on "Implicature" at Oxford in 1965, Grice speaks of helpfulness
(to use McEvoy's "language" which is not helpful), or cooperation.
"Anti-social" surely falls within 'non-cooperative'. There's of course
"anti-social" and "non-social," and I think McEvoy does make a point that,
should Lynch's procedure get generalised (and judges followed the utterance of
sentences with a colloquial exchange of those convicted) may be yet another
aspect which awaits 'critical evaluation'. Note that the exchange could have
peacefully go, not like it did:
iv. H: You are a [four-letter word].
Lynch L: You are a [four-letter word] yourself.
H: Go [make love to] yourself.
Judge Lynch: You [go make love to yourself] too.
But
v. H: You are a [four-letter word].
Judge Lynch [signaling to the officer that Mr. H be taken out of the
courtroom].
This would have saved those present Mr. H's imperative ("Go [make love to]
yourself") and the attending repartee by Judge Lynch. But then, as McEvoy would
say, "it would not have made it to The Guardian". The Guardian's title for the
source is that Hennigan and Lynch "exchange insults," which is back to the
perlocutionary aspect, which is Griceian in nature. Mr. H's intention was
surely to INSULT Judge Lynch, and McEvoy's point is that Judge Lynch never felt
insulted -- as a statement from a liar cannot be taken in its face truth-value,
as it were, to use McEvoy's simile --. It was also an intention on H's part to
utter the imperative, "Go [make love to] yourself," prompted, we realise, by HE
being _insulted_ by Judge Lynch, "You are a [four-letter word] yourself." The
fact that Judge Lunch did not keep silent even then, but added insult (if not
injury) to the proceeding ("You [go make love to yourself] too") was like a
"Bye-bye, Mr. H." -- which leads us to two important conclusions of McEvoy's
study, "Judicial language: its use and misuse" which is now going better -- the
prison system, and what "The Guardian" considers to have enough merit for
publication (The 'exchange of insults' was notably not reported by either The
Telegraph or The Times, never mind The New York Times).
-- The latter of which being one newspaper H. L. A. Hart did not subscribe to.
Cheers,
Speranza
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