Auden once 'uttered' ("utter" is a term of art for Grice):
i. We must love one another or die.
Johnson 'echoed' Auden, by 'uttering':
ii. These are the stakes: to make a world in which all of God's children
can live, or go into the dark. We must love each other or we must die.
As L. Helm notes, Auden did change (i) into
iii. We must love one another AND die.
Geary still has a point about all this: he distinguishes between the
utterance (or as I prefer the 'utteratum' -- a coinage by Austin) and the
utterer. In his words: the artist and his artistry. Did Johnson read Lit. at
college?
Johnson keeps the 'or', which is political, rather than go for the 'and'
which is what Grice calls 'successive' yet commutative. Cfr.
iv. We must die and love one another.
Cheers,
Speranza
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