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

 G.: Let us begin with your unfortunate Collections remark: “He has beautiful handwriting.” S.: Which in Oxford never remains where it was put. G.: Quite. On the page it is praise of penmanship. In the room it becomes a judgment on philosophy. S.: So the dictum is one thing and the rest is the real sport. G.: Precisely. And Pacetti is useful here because rhetoricians never believed that saying exhausted signifying. S.: They believed it organised it. G.: Better. They knew that discourse has an art because what is meant runs ahead of what is merely uttered. S.: Then you want a system beyond the dictum. G.: Not beyond it as if one could discard it. Beyond it as one may go beyond the porch without denying the house. S.: So let us name the parts. G.: Yes. Dictum first, because if one cannot say what was said one has no business saying what was suggested. S.: And you mean dictum seriously. G.: Entirely seriously. Not every piece of noise deserves the honour. S.: Hence your favourite abomination: “the the king the on biscuit.” G.: Exactly. It may be a bit of dicere, if one is very charitable to lungs and lips, but it is not a dictum. S.: Because it does not transparently evoke a propositional form apt for a that-clause. G.: Precisely. One cannot say, with any composure, “He said that the the king the on biscuit.” S.: Unless one is a linguist in disgrace. G.: Or a poet in relapse. So dictum is not any phonetic accident. It is a significant saying with enough shape to bear propositional report. S.: Then in your tutorial example the dictum is: Smith has beautiful handwriting. G.: Yes. Let us write that as d. S.: And the tutor is x, the pupil or hearer y. G.: Very good. Now I want S(x,y,z) for total signification. S.: Where z is what x signifies to y in uttering the dictum. G.: Exactly. But because rhetoric is not a one-floor cottage, z may itself have layers. S.: So z may include the dictum and the implicatum. G.: Precisely. The dictum belongs within total signification, but it is not all of it. S.: Then one might say: S(x,y,z) where z = d plus i. G.: Yes, with i for implicatum, suggestum, significatum beyond the explicitum. S.: You are multiplying terms. G.: Terms, yes. Senses, no. That is the whole point. S.: Ah yes, your modified razor. G.: Senses are not to be multiplied beyond necessity. If one can preserve one sense of a word and explain the rest by rhetorical principle, one ought to. S.: So “beautiful handwriting” still means beautiful handwriting. G.: Certainly. I have no wish to say that in Oxford it means “hopeless at philosophy.” S.: Yet in Oxford it may signify it. G.: Exactly. That is the distinction Pacetti’s world of rhetorical precepts helps one keep in view. S.: Then “damning with faint praise” is not lexical ambiguity but rhetorical operation. G.: Splendid. Not two senses of “beautiful,” but one dictum operating under a principle of reasonable uptake. S.: We now need the principle. G.: Indeed. I have grown tired of principles breeding like rabbits. Let us try one. S.: One principle, many maxims? G.: Yes. Maxims may be multiplied because they are local praecepta, reducible to one governing requirement. S.: Which is? G.: Something like reasonable conversational helpfulness. S.: Rather Leechian. G.: He may have borrowed decently. But I want it drier, and more Kantian in backbone. S.: A categorical rhetorical imperative? G.: If you must. Make your contribution such that a reasonable addressee may recover, from what you openly present and how you present it, the further point you may properly be taken to intend. S.: That is rather long for a commandment. G.: Good commands usually are once philosophers have touched them. S.: Then Pacetti would call the local versions praecepta. G.: Exactly. Brevity, order, exempla, economy, decorum, adaptation to audience, and all the rest. S.: But these are subordinate. G.: Entirely. They are the rhetorician’s departmental circulars. The principle is the constitution. S.: Then let us test the tutorial case under it. G.: Yes. x says to y, “Smith has beautiful handwriting.” S.: Dictum d: Smith has beautiful handwriting. G.: Correct. Now y knows that x is a philosophy tutor, that Collections concern philosophy, that handwriting is a notably irrelevant excellence in such a setting, and that x is not usually paid to celebrate calligraphy. S.: So by the principle of reasonable helpfulness, y asks why x chose that remark. G.: Exactly. The utterance would be oddly unhelpful if it were merely penmanship appreciation. S.: Therefore y infers a broader signification. G.: Yes. The implicatum i emerges: Smith is poor at the thing under present assessment. S.: In shorthand, perhaps hopeless at philosophy. G.: Dryly so. S.: Then S(x,y,z) here yields z = d plus i, where i is recovered from the mismatch between explicit compliment and situational relevance. G.: Very good. One might even say that the faintness of the praise is the trigger. S.: So rhetoric and pragmatics meet in a kind of managed insufficiency. G.: Excellent. Praise too small for the occasion produces blame large enough for the hearer. S.: That is almost epigram. G.: Keep it and flatten it later. S.: Then what of suggestum? G.: I rather like it. The thing suggested without being entailed by the dictum. S.: A participial cousin of suggerire. G.: Yes. Not classical enough to satisfy every pedant, but serviceable as a label. S.: And significatum? G.: Broader. One may use significatum for what is signified in the large, including dictum and implicatum if one wishes. S.: Then perhaps: dictum = explicitum primary suggestum = implicatum secondary significatum = total communicated content. G.: That will do. Though I should reserve totality for S(x,y,z), because signification is not merely content but content as conveyed from x to y under conditions. S.: So the triadic form matters. G.: Very much. A bare proposition hanging in the air is not yet rhetoric. S.: Nor pragmatics. G.: Exactly. Pacetti would insist on speaker, audience, and formed uptake. S.: Then your symbol S(x,y,z) is rather well chosen. G.: Thank you. x signifies z to y. S.: And z may have articulated substructure. G.: Yes. Let z = {d, i1, i2 ...} if the occasion is particularly rich or the speaker particularly devious. S.: Oxford often encouraged both. G.: To the sorrow of the young. S.: Let us ask about explicitum and implicitum. G.: A useful pair. The explicitum is what the dictum makes openly available. The implicitum is what a reasonable hearer may gather by the governing principle and local praecepta. S.: Then implicatum is the product of the hearer’s rational passage from explicitum to implicitum. G.: Exactly. Not free association, not hallucination, not literary criticism on a bad day. S.: Then rhetoric is not ornament but management of that passage. G.: That is the thing. Pacetti’s “art” is precisely the shaping of conditions under which an audience moves as it ought from what is said to what is to be grasped. S.: Which sounds very close to your own concerns. G.: It does, except that rhetoricians are usually less shy about audiences and more shameless about effect. S.: While you speak of cooperative reason. G.: Yes. But even my cooperative principle has a rhetorical ancestry if one peels off enough Oxford reserve. S.: Then maxims are not themselves principles. G.: No. They are reduced expressions of local prudence under the one broader requirement. S.: Like praecepta in Pacetti. G.: Exactly. “Be brief,” “use exempla,” “fit the audience,” “avoid needless obscurity.” S.: Horace and Quintilian hovering in the background. G.: Always, when anyone begins to say anything tolerable about style. S.: Then perhaps your maxims should have been called praecepta all along. G.: Potts said as much, and was irritatingly right. S.: Yet there is a difference. G.: Yes. “Maxim” has a brittle moral sound in English, and therefore invites parody. “Praeceptum” has a pedagogic firmness without the same aphoristic self-importance. S.: Then your one principle plus many praecepta would be more honest. G.: Quite. Though by now the old terminology has entered the market and must be endured. S.: Pacetti also gives you authority and exemption in the ecclesiastical tract. G.: Yes, and that too is relevant. Rules are one thing, dispensations another. Meaning often depends on how departures from rule are themselves rule-governed. S.: You mean that exemption is itself meaningful. G.: Precisely. If a bishop’s authority does not bind here, that fact alters the signification of obedience there. S.: So institutions also communicate by exceptions. G.: Very much so. An exemption is often a kind of higher-order utterance about the scope of a rule. S.: Which resembles conversational departure. G.: Exactly. A speaker may flout or suspend a local praeceptum in a way that itself communicates compliance with the deeper principle. S.: Such as being not fully informative in order to be appropriately informative. G.: Yes. Or being deliberately indirect in order to preserve decency, tact, or the inferential labour proper to the audience. S.: Then the old rhetorical art and your pragmatics meet in the management of authorised non-literalness. G.: Splendid. That is very nearly the formula. S.: Let us return to the tutorial case and formalise it a little more. G.: By all means. S.: x utters u to y. u realises dictum d. Given context c and principle P, y infers i. Therefore total signification S(x,y,z) where z = f(d,c,P) yielding d plus i. G.: Excellent. Though I should add that y’s inference also relies on assumptions about x’s rationality and role. S.: Tutorhood as a semantic operator. G.: Almost. A tutor’s compliment has different atmospheric pressure from a barber’s. S.: “Beautiful handwriting” from a calligrapher is merely encouraging. G.: Exactly. From a philosophy tutor in Collections it is a funeral wreath. S.: Then context c must include institutional role, occasion, and known standards. G.: Very much so. Rhetoric without occasion is taxidermy. S.: That is good too. G.: You may keep that as well and later improve it by spoiling it. S.: Thank you. Then can the implicatum itself be multiple? G.: Certainly. One may have a primary implicatum and several looser penumbrae. S.: For instance: i1 Smith is poor at philosophy. i2 Smith’s essay had no more notable merit than penmanship. i3 further praise would have been insincere. G.: Yes. The art lies in deciding which of these are central to z and which are merely escorting nuances. S.: Pacetti would say the orator must know how much to leave to audience completion. G.: Exactly. Too little and one becomes blunt. Too much and one becomes merely obscure. S.: Hence praecepta of brevity and exemplum. G.: Yes. Brevity because a hearer should grasp quickly. Exemplum because examples shorten the road where precepts alone grow long. S.: Pacetti quotes Quintilian on that. G.: And rightly. Long by precepts, short and efficacious by examples. The whole theory of implicatum could be taught that way. S.: Through examples of faint praise, guarded answer, strategic silence, over-specificity, and the like. G.: Precisely. One learns the art by seeing the route from dictum to significatum repeatedly travelled. S.: Then what of “A newspaper?” in response to “Bring me a paper tomorrow.” G.: A lovely case. It shows incorrigibility of meaning and the failure of certain over-clever reductions. S.: Because the hearer pretends to keep the dictum at an object-language level while ignoring obvious intended sense. G.: Exactly. The speaker means a paper for tutorial purposes. The addressee retreats to lexical possibility and asks about a newspaper. S.: So here the dictum is under-specified but the occasion suffices. G.: Precisely. Conversation supplies what dictionary fetishism withholds. S.: And the reply exploits possible sense against likely signification. G.: Yes. It is responsive and incorrigible at once. S.: Pacetti would say the praeceptum of audience adaptation has been violated by the hearer. G.: Very likely. The hearer has refused reasonable helpfulness. S.: So not all rhetorical failure belongs to the speaker. G.: Heaven forbid. Hearers may be culpably literal. S.: Then S(x,y,z) includes the hearer’s cooperative labour as a condition. G.: Entirely. Without that, rhetoric collapses into mere emission. S.: And pragmatics into acoustics. G.: Exactly. S.: Let us ask whether the one principle can be stated even more simply. G.: Try. S.: Make your saying reasonably serviceable to shared uptake. G.: Not bad. A little bloodless, but philosophically respectable. S.: Pacetti would have preferred a nobler cadence. G.: Rhetoricians always do. They distrust skeletons unless properly draped. S.: Then perhaps: Contribute in such a way that what ought to be understood may reasonably be understood. G.: Better. That has the right air of one principle generating many praecepta. S.: Such as be brief, be orderly, suit the audience, support by examples, do not obscure needlessly. G.: Exactly. And in my own later vocabulary those become the maxims, or what should have been called local rhetorical constraints. S.: Then you differ from Kant’s counsels of prudence? G.: Somewhat. Kant’s counsels aim at means to given ends. My principle concerns the rational conditions of successful communicative practice. It is not mere prudence in the market sense. S.: Though it remains practical. G.: Entirely practical. Conversation is a rational art, not a metaphysical weather report. S.: Pacetti’s title Dell’arte retorica then becomes unexpectedly apt for your purposes. G.: Very much so. The art is not acrobatics but governed signification. S.: Yet there is acrobatics in Oxford. G.: Only because some dons mistake balance for wit. S.: You never did. G.: Rarely on purpose. S.: Then should we say that dictum is necessary but not sufficient for signification? G.: Exactly. Without dictum, in serious cases, no stable proposition is before us. But without implicatum, suggestum, and broader significatum, most human utterance is anaemic. S.: Then “the the king the on biscuit” fails because it gives neither good dictum nor therefore higher signification. G.: Precisely. One cannot build implicature upon verbal swamp. S.: So dictum has to be treated seriously or not at all. G.: Entirely. A good theory must distinguish between articulate saying and mere noise. S.: Which rhetoricians often knew better than certain moderns. G.: They had to. They were training hearers and speakers, not merely indexing corpora. S.: Then Pacetti helps you resist both lexical multiplication and formless context-mongering. G.: Exactly. One sense preserved where possible, one principle governing the move from explicitum to implicitum, many local praecepta handling actual occasions. S.: And the implicatum is then just the suggestum rationally recoverable under that regime. G.: Yes. Not a second dictionary meaning but a broadened signification. S.: Hence the triadic form again: x signifies z to y by uttering u, where u gives d explicitly, and by P plus c yields i implicitly. G.: Admirably neat. S.: Too neat? G.: Neatness is permissible if one remembers that actual occasions remain untidy. S.: Pacetti’s own examples would be more decorous than ours. G.: Probably, though all rhetoricians secretly enjoy malice when packaged as discrimination. S.: Especially faint praise. G.: Especially that. Nothing reveals an audience’s practical intelligence faster than a compliment too thin for innocence. S.: Then perhaps the final moral is this. Rhetoric is the art of governing the passage from dictum to total signification under one principle of reasonable helpfulness and many subordinate praecepta. G.: Very good. S.: And the implicatum is simply one major species of that governed excess over the explicitum. G.: Exactly. Neither mystical residue nor lexical duplication, but rationally licensed suggestum. S.: Dry enough? G.: Sufficiently Roman, with just enough Oxford acid to make Pacetti smile.