[lit-ideas] Language: Virtue and Vice

From: Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2013 01:29:10 -0500 (EST)
O. K., if you are having problems with delayed posts, you may consult the  
archive of lit-ideas online.
 
I find my reply to your query in "Language and Virtue":
 
_//www.freelists.org/post/lit-ideas/Language-and-Virtue,1_ 
(//www.freelists.org/post/lit-ideas/Language-and-Virtue,1) 
 
I wrote:
 
It seems to be an interesting essay by a professional cricketer  (alas,  
Grice was a gentlemanly cricketer -- meaning, I never quite  trust a 
professional cricketer, :)) discussing Orwell.

It does not  provide a proliferation of examples, so the essay remains  
pretty  abstract.

I mean, if it is meant as contributing to the field of English Usage or the 
 Morality in the Use of English, more examples, even implicatures, should 
be  provided.

Odd that this query by O.K. comes just when Henninge was referring  to the 
phrase of 'making propositions  
clear' in Witters which reminded  me Grice's desideratum of clarity and the 
attending motto, anti-Oxonian, and  by Lewis, that "Clarity is not enough".

Language and Virtue, as  per header, seems to me to refer to something more 
Footian in  spirit. One of her interviews bears the title, "The grammar of  
goodness", which Grice should have enjoyed as he had a thing for  Foot. 

"Virtue", as per the title of the essay cited by O. K., is, strictly,  of 
course the wrong word, since it's cognate with VIRILE --.

"Virtue  Ethics" could be the keyword, and LANGUAGE the subspecification. 
 
I  wish G. J. Warnock had written a continuation to his brilliant,  
"Language and  Morality" because he was leaning towards a  virtue-ethics, and 
focusing on how axiological-oriented our common  expressions are.

Blame the Romans for 'virtus'. It's "arete" in Greek  that is the 
superlative abstract noun for aristos. Although perhaps  the strict Greek 
equivalent 
to Roman Virtus is Greek  "andreia", no?

The antonym of virtue is vice: so perhaps a different subject line  would 
be: Language: Virtue, and Vice. Or something.
 
A virtue of language is a bit of a misnomer; it's speakers who fail to be  
virtuous. And to speak of linguistic virtue is yet another misnomer if not  
oxymoron. Virtue, after all, is ENTIRE (like philosophy).
 
Cheers,
 
Speranza
[lit-ideas] Language: Virtue and Vice

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