In a message dated 4/4/2015 1:43:50 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx responds to: >Who is this Dylan or budokan?>
"Things that anyone who sincerely asks this would probably file under
"Whatever"".
On a different note, O. K. (a rigid designator, according to Kripke) was
referring to the 'man in the street'. If Grice focused on 'and', 'or', 'but'
("She was poor but she was honest"), 'if', it's not because they are ONLY
spoken by the man in the street. The English countryman may well use them
too!
"Whatever" is perhaps a different animal. Grice got interested in 'if',
'or', and 'and', because his tutee, Strawson, was saying outrageous things
about them. He was saying that there was an ordinary-language use of 'and'
that is not Russell's:
i. She got married and had a child.
vs.
ii. She had a child and got married.
Whitehead and Russell claim this is commutative, but it isn't, Strawson
argues. Grice defends Russell (hardly your average man in the street -- he
always took taxis), as per the cancellation of the implicature:
iii. She had a child and got married; although of course I do not wish to
imply that the events occurred in this order.
i.e. the utterer is following the conversational maxim, 'be orderly', and
Strawson SHOULD know that. Grice's other example is clearer:
iv. Socrates died, and he drank the hemlock; although, and even if I was
not there to witness it, I am not hereby implicating that the succession of
events happened such as I'm telling you now.
"Whatever", on the other hand, is often 'rude' in terms of conversational
implicature. Consider:
A: So, are you going or not?
B: Whatever.
Or
A: You have to admit that I was right and you were wrong.
B: Whatever.
Or:
A: It IS a lovely dress, no?
B: Whatever.
Grice notes that 'whatever' is difficult to formalise, unlike 'and' -- "p
& q".
What type of logical form does 'whatever' display? Only once we have
identified the logical form of 'whatever' can we start playing with its
conversational implicatures.
Geary notes that 'whatever' was spelled in the Middle Ages as two words
("and this fact, that it is a compound of two words, is a lesson which never
should be forgotten"): 'what' and 'ever'. The 'ever' may not be synonymous
with 'always'. And the 'what' is an interrogative pronoun. Geary adds:
""Whatever" is never used in France" implicating NOT just that it's NOT a
French
expression.
Cheers,
Speranza
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