Palin and Gricean maxims
So, how many did she violate in the debate on Thursday?*
*I recognize that technically, Palin wasn’t making conversational implicatures, but still, given that Grice proposed these as the rational underpinnings of communication, the fact that she really violated/stretched all of them is interesting…
October 6th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
I can’t believe that I’ve come this far in life and never heard of these. These are essentially the exact same ’strategies’ used to prepare people for ordination exams. Seems like they should be ground rules for conversation in undergraduate course discussions.
October 6th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Yeah, and my post was half-joking. Grice’s point is not really that we *should* follow these rules, but that usually when someone violates one of the maxims, we often have reason to think they mean something else with their words, like saying “Boy is it cold in here” when it’s really hot.
You should check out Grice on implicature, if nothing else because it’s important stuff in philosophy of language (and I would guess you might find some application in theology/hermeneutics).