T. Fjeld was regaling us with some translations from a Nobel Prize. McEvoy was
wondering about ‘the lead ocean’, which reminded me of Grice. Is that a
metaphor? Grice gives only ONE example of a metaphor
i. You’re the cream in my coffee.
(He uses “You are,” but I prefer the song version! Grice argues the implicature
is “You’re my pride and joy”. The processing goes along the lines that ‘you’
being ‘the cream in [the utterer’s] coffee’ is what Grice calls a categorial
mistake, and best understood as “You are LIKE the cream in my coffee.” With the
snowflakes falling on an ocean of lead, the Swedish may be involved. It does
look like for an ocean to be ‘of lead’ falls within Grice’s idea of a
categorial mistake.
(Strictly, Grice uses ‘categorial falsity’: “Examples [of metaphor] like 'You
are the cream in my coffee' characteristically involve categorical falsity, so
the contradictory of what the utterer has made as if to say will, strictly
speaking, be a truism; so it cannot be that that such a utterer is trying to
get across [The utterer is not being ironic.] The most likely supposition is
that the utterer is attributing to his audience some feature or features in
respect of which his addressee resembles (more or less fancifully) the
mentioned substance.”)
McEvoy was referring to Mullan.
Mullan wrote in “The Guardian” about another Nobel Prize (Incidentally, the
Nobel Prize must be distinguished from the Ray Noble prize, given to the best
trumpetist of the year).
Unlike the Noble, the Nobel is awarded by an academy that has a ‘permenent
secretary’. When the prize was given to the poem Fjeld is translating, the
permanent secretary declared that the prize was awarded
“because, through his condensed, translucent images, [this poet] gives us fresh
access to reality”.
And ‘ocean of lead’ may be one of them! But back to Mullan. Mullan uttered:
“The Swedish Academy has made some dubious
– and last year attention-seeking – decisions in recent years […].”
Mullan’s implicatures (he has not said it! “but could he cancel it?,” Grice
might wonder) include:
ii. The Swedish Academy is seeking attention by giving the
Nobel Prize of Literature to Bob Dylan.
iii. The Swedish Academy caught Mullan’s attention.
It might be argued that Mullan’s idiomatic phrase, ‘attention-seeking,’ does
not entail, but merely implicate, “attention-catching.” Cfr.:
iv. Seek and thy shall find.
v. Look, that is, again, some attention-seeking behaviour from
her. Pay no notice!
It seems odd (if not otiose, but not mpossible) to try and cancel the
‘attention-catching’ implicature:
vi. Look: that is attention-seeking behaviour from her – but it
won’t catch _my_ attention.
Strictly, ‘attention-seeking’’s reciprocal is ‘attention-finding’ (“Seek and
thou shalt find”). Attention-seeking can go wrong, in that her behaviour,
attention-seeking as it was, did not find attention it was seeking. It might be
further argued that it’s _her_ who’s seeking attention (if not finding it), not
her behaviour. And stuff.
Which brings us back to Ishiguro. Or not.
Cheers,
Speranza
