H. P. GRICE E J. L. SPERANZA: LA CONVERSAZIONE -- I VERBALI: RUTILIO

 G.: Let us begin with the nuisance in the phrase, since nuisances are often where philosophy hides. I say implicature is a figure of speech. S.: And I at once ask for my money’s worth. What do you mean, of speech, as opposed to of thought? G.: Exactly the Greek nuisance: nous against lexis, or rather dianoea against lexis, if one wishes to keep Rutilio in the room. S.: So figura is schema, and schema is not mere ornament. G.: Never mere ornament, unless one is reading rhetoric after lunch and too comfortably. S.: Then when you say an implicature is a figure of speech, you do not mean a purple flourish. G.: Certainly not. I mean that it belongs to the way an utterance is shaped for uptake. S.: Shaped in speech rather than merely housed in thought. G.: Yes. A schema of saying, not merely a posture of the soul. S.: Yet the soul is not absent. G.: No more absent than in Aristotle’s account of action. But the point of entry is lexical and utterance-bound. S.: Hence Rutilio. G.: Hence Rutilio. He is doing schemata lexeos, not merely tidying oratorical cuffs. S.: Then your claim is that implicature belongs with schema lexeos. G.: Indeed. And more strongly: all implicature is like that. S.: All? That is a very undergraduate word. G.: I know. I use it here with due caution and only because caution, once advertised, can sometimes be suspended. S.: So all implicature is a figure of speech? G.: Yes, if by that one means that what is conveyed depends on the way the saying is conducted under recognizable conversational form. S.: Not on a private glow in the thinker’s breast. G.: Precisely. Philosophy has been overrun by breasts of that sort. S.: Then let us push further. Is it only the implicatum that is figured, or also the dictum? G.: Very good. Not only the implicatum. The dictum too. S.: That will annoy those who think the said arrives plain and the meant comes dressed. G.: They deserve annoyance. The said is never so plain as they say. S.: Then what is the dictum? G.: The propositional content, complete with its articulated logical temper. S.: That sounds almost respectable. G.: It becomes less so once one unpacks it. S.: Please do. Dryly. G.: The dictum is not just a bare phrastic residue. It comes complete with radix and operator, or if you prefer the later Gricean menagerie, with its internal distribution of forces. S.: You mean the neustic, phrastic, clistic, and tropic. G.: Exactly. The four subatomic particles of civilized assertion. S.: Subatomic is generous. Oxonian conversation usually breaks down at a larger scale. G.: True. But the metaphor behaves. The dictum is not just a phrase-book content. It is a content under mood, closure, and mode. S.: Then the dictum too is schematically configured. G.: Entirely. Which is why I resist the fantasy that only the implicature is rhetorical while the dictum remains some pristinely logical slab. S.: So rhetoric has already entered before the implicature begins its quiet work. G.: Yes. Or rather there is no clean frontier. The utterance is formed throughout. S.: Then Rutilio helps because schema lexeos concerns form as borne by actual saying. G.: Exactly. He gives us a way of speaking about the formedness of utterance without reducing it to decorative excess. S.: Which is useful, since modern philosophy hears rhetoric and reaches for smelling salts. G.: Or for Frege, which is often much the same thing. S.: Then when you write figure of speech, you mean something like an intelligible pattern of utterance by which content is made available under a certain route. G.: Very well put. A route, a shaping, a recognisable arrangement for uptake. S.: And not merely a trope in the schoolmaster’s list. G.: No. Though schoolmasters occasionally preserve truths they do not fully deserve. S.: That is almost charitable. G.: Only almost. Now, the contrast with figure of thought matters because figures of thought are typically taken to belong to reasoning or conceptual arrangement independently of verbal embodiment. S.: Whereas you think implicature requires embodiment in saying. G.: Yes. It is inseparable from the lexis of the occasion. S.: Even if the thought behind it could in some broad sense have been entertained otherwise. G.: Certainly. But implicature is not the thought entertained; it is the thought conveyed by the manner of saying. S.: Then if someone asks whether implicature is psychological or rhetorical, your answer is yes, but not symmetrically. G.: Just so. The psychology matters as enabling condition, but the philosophical identity of implicature is lexical and conversational. S.: Lexical sounds a little narrower than you really mean. G.: Perhaps. Let us say lexeos, then, since Greek improves many things by making them older. S.: Including confusions. G.: Especially confusions. But in this case the Greek helps. Schema lexeos means not mere wording in the dictionary sense, but the formed character of utterance. S.: So a figure of speech is not a frill attached to content, but one way content gets to count as this rather than that in communication. G.: Exactly. Form is not exterior paint. It is internally constitutive of what is taken. S.: Then the old opposition between plain statement and figured implication collapses. G.: It should. The plain statement is usually a retrospective invention of those who dislike paying attention. S.: That sounds like a maxim. G.: A remark, at any rate. S.: Then tell me where thought enters at all. If all implicature is schema lexeos, has figure of thought been pensioned off? G.: Not pensioned off. Merely deprived of monopoly. There are certainly arrangements of thought. But implicature, as I mean it, is not one of them taken in abstraction. S.: Because it arises only where an addressee can recognise a manner of saying as reason-giving. G.: Precisely. Recognition is essential. One does not have implicature in private rehearsal or silent conceptual posture. S.: Unless one talks to oneself. G.: Which many philosophers do, with lamentable results. S.: Then Rutilio becomes unexpectedly modern. G.: He becomes unexpectedly useful, which is better. S.: Is he doing this self-consciously, though? Or are you gently looting him? G.: All learned conversation is a form of licensed looting. S.: That is pleasantly Roman. G.: Rutilian, if you like. He gives categories for the formal life of saying. I press them into a pragmatist service. S.: Prammatica is rettorica conversationale. G.: Exactly. Though one ought to say it with enough seriousness to frighten the literal-minded. S.: They are easily frightened. G.: That is one of their charms. S.: Let us return to the dictum. You said it includes radix and operator. Is that your way of saying that even the said comes already under force? G.: Yes. The said is not merely that p. It is, as uttered, something like asserting that p, asking whether p, ordering that p, and so forth. S.: So the dictum is never a naked proposition wandering the streets unchaperoned. G.: Certainly not. It has illocutionary clothing on from the start. S.: Then the dictum itself already belongs to speech rather than pure thought. G.: Exactly. Which is why I said the dictum, not just the implicatum, belongs in this rhetorical neighbourhood. S.: One begins to suspect that your dislike of a pristine slab is actually a dislike of ideal languages. G.: I have no objection to ideal languages provided they remain ideal and do not attempt colonisation. S.: Yet many will still say: surely the implicature is one thing and the figure another. G.: Only if they insist on treating figure as decoration. Once figure means formedness of saying, the separation becomes artificial. S.: Then every implicature is schematic because every implicature depends on a patterned departure, restraint, emphasis, or arrangement in utterance. G.: Very good. Not necessarily departure in the vulgar sense of flouting, but certainly arrangement under a recognisable norm. S.: Recognisable by rational hearers under conversational assumptions. G.: Yes. Otherwise one has merely noise, affect, or private intention, none of which by itself yields implicature. S.: So the hearer must be able to say, in effect, ah, that was said that way for a reason. G.: Precisely. And that reason is not exhausted by syntax or semantics narrowly construed. S.: Hence rhetoric. G.: Hence rhetoric, but not the sort with peacocks. S.: You really have had enough of ornament. G.: I have had enough of people mistaking ornament for the whole province of rhetoric. S.: Then one could say that implicature is rhetorical in the old and honourable sense: it belongs to the arts by which saying is made apt for civic intelligence. G.: Splendidly put. That is almost Roman enough to please me. S.: Rutilio would approve? G.: He would at least not throw us out. S.: And Speranza? G.: He would add a footnote, a parenthesis, and an etymology, then insist that Oxford had been saying it all along without knowing the Latin was waiting in Rome. S.: That sounds plausible. G.: Most historical wit does. S.: Then let me see if I have it. Implicature is a figure of speech because it depends on the schema of utterance as publicly recognisable form. It is not a figure of thought because it is not merely an inner configuration of concepts apart from saying. G.: Exactly. S.: And the dictum too is schematically formed, since the propositional content comes under the integrated play of phrastic, neustic, clistic, and tropic, rather than arriving as an inert object. G.: Exactly again. S.: Which leaves only the punchline. G.: There is one. S.: I thought so. G.: Very well. If all implicature is schema lexeos, and even the dictum comes dressed for speech, then the philosopher who asks for meaning without rhetoric is rather like a don who asks for tea without water. S.: And what does he get? G.: At Oxford, usually tenure.