I will consider this example -- a good one -- by L. J. Helm: In a message dated 6/22/2011 1:07:18 P.M., lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes: Ginger goes to the glass door opening out onto the patio and sits there staring at something in the yard. I walk over and open the door thinking she wants out. She doesn't move. I start to close it and she moves slightly so I open it again. She sits back; so with the door open I say (or ask) in exasperation, "Well, are you going out or not?" When she still doesn't move I close the door and walk away. In this case "or not" is not redundant. ---- OK. Let's see if we can get to the symbols. Recall 'v' (the wedge, short for Latin 'vel') is the INCLUSIVE disjunction p v q 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 We shouldn't be too concerned with that, in that 'or not' seems to indicate p v ~ p which is a tautology. But one should get a caveat here. It has been argued that "whether", for example, may be followed by things like: "She'll come whether it's hot or it's cold". So, here it's not "whether it's cold -- or not" -- or 'whether it's hot -- or not". So, in "or not" one has to proceed step by step: --- with 'or' proper (as in "come shine or rain") --- with 'or' followed by 'not' -- the tautology expressed above. >Well, are you going out? We are wondering if this is equivalent, at the level of the CONTENT of the message, to: "Are you going out -- or not?" It is worth pointing out that while Grice considers quantity of info to relate to the content of what is said, he sees maxims pertaining to "manner" (as 'avoid unnecessary prolixity', under which I submit 'whether or not' falls) not as relating to the content of what is said but to the WAY what has been said has been said. Manner pertains to rhetoric and style. Helm himself considered that when in the previous example we were considering whether the utterer that was being quoted ("guys, they are going in the right direction, or not?") was just indulging in a rethorical flourish. So I would count, "Are you going out or not?" as rhetoric. Not in the sense that "Is the Pope Catholic?" is rhetoric, but in the sense that since it involves a maxim of style or manner, it does not add to what-is-said (the dictive content or component). It is a flourish out of "Are you going out?" ----- Note that the "Well," that Helm uses to preface the 'rhetorical' (or loaded if you prefer) question, indicates that it is the concusion of some argument. More on this below. When Grice considered examples like: "That pillar box seems to me to be red; in fact, is IS red." he noted ("The causal theory of perception") that Witters is wrong. For Witters, the use of 'seems' is non-justificatory almost. "It seems to me as though I've had a headache"). Grice sees this as an implicature. But he is specific and general at the same time. Grice calls this the D-or-D implicature where "D" (the first one) stands for "Doubt", and "D" (the second one) stands for "Denial". There is a doubt-or-denial implicature involved in things like" a seems phi. "a" is a logical symbol for an individual, and phi is a predicate for a phenomenal property. So Grice wants to say, philosophically, that the philosophical (but also ordinary) jargon, "a seems phi" carries a totally detachable, cancellable, and nonlogical (i.e. not part of the entailment of what one says) 'implication', which he calls 'implicature' (Not yet in "Causal theory of perception", 1961. He used 'implicature' in 1964 only). ---- Similarly, for loaded (as I prefer to call those 'rhetorical' "or not" tagged) questions. "Are you going out?" is a simple enough question. What IS to question? To question is to ask the answerer to mark (1) p (0) p '1' for true, '0' for false. "Tell me if the following proposition is true: "You are going out"". There's nothing more to it. It is obvious that if Ginger provides (1) Ginger is going out. one can yield, as per entailment, (0) Ginger is not going out. ----- The doubt-or-denial implicature relates to the use of "So..." (or "Well, ..."). In symbols then, the logical form of the question (Grice calls this 'erotetic', the logic of questions and answers) ?p equivalent to ?(p v ~p) By flouting the maxim, "Avoid avoidable unnecessitated prolixity items" (be brief), the utterer then attaches the implicature D-or-D. Someone is doubting whether Ginger will go out (hence the 'or not', with emphasis on _or_). Someone is DENYING that Ginger will go out (the 'not', proper) ---- And so on. It seems that in all cases so far offered a defense of the redundancy can be argued for -- at the level of the message communicated. There was a forum discussing this. And someone was saying: "Well, 'whether or not' is such a common Americanism, that what can you do about it? It communicates what it communicates." But someone was responding to the effect that the maximally efficient exchange of info is what should be valued, rather than redundancies like "rules and regulations" which do not depend on the logic of discourse. ----- Note that the oratio obliqua rendition helps. Helm wonders if Ginger will go out. Since it seems otiose -- 'otiose' is possibly the key word here, unsurprisingly -- to add 'or not' in that report, one wonders. Helm says, "Are you going out -- or not?" How are we to report that? Strictly, in oratio recta, there's no problem. "He asked, 'Are you going out, or not?". But in oratio obliqua, one may argue that the elongated, "Helm asked Ginger whether Ginger would go out or not". Note that the past tense is not necessary: "What is Helm doing?" "He is asking Ginger whether Ginger will go out or not" "He is asking Ginger whether (or not) Ginger will go out." ---- One however should allow that when repoorting speech like that, the reporter is free NOT to indulge in the same sort of otiosities that he finds the original utterer indulging in. Or not. Cheers, Speranza ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html