cog’s blog

The 2nd part of the principle of relevance says, as Dr. Meyers put on the board, "Every communicative act carries with it the utterer's belief in its optimal relevance." What about when someone is trying to be as ambigous and obscure as possible. I don't have a good example, but sometimes people try to be just as confusing as possible and bring in statements and ideas out of left field. Does that constitute optimal relevance, even by the speaker's beliefs? Or is it relevant because they are trying to be confusing? Thoughts?

Yesterday we talked a little about performative verbs again. One example we saw was "regret" and "I regretfully decline..." I think many times when we use this phrase regret is not necessarily a performative verb. For a performative verb to actually be that we have to mean it right. Often when we say/write "I regretfully decline..." we don't actually feel regret; it's just a polite way to excuse ourselves from doing something, which we may be thrilled not to have to do. Also, in this example "regret" is used as an adverb. Can an adverb be said to be a performative verb? Is there such a category of performative adverb?

I find the agreement maxim interesting. This maxim is (at times) is basically just a lie. The agreement maxim says we should minimize disagreement and maximize agreement with the hearer. So let's pretend someone gives me an idea. I reply with "I think that's a good idea, but what do you think of this..." Basically what we often mean with a response like this is "I think your idea sucks and mine is better." I wonder how many friends we would keep if we just stopped following the politeness principle all together.

So I've decided that flouting maxims is much more interesting than following them. I'm glad people flout them. If no one flouted these maxims we would have some very boring conversations. Simple sarcasm, irony, and joking often is the result of these maxims being flouted.

I like how the maxim of manner is violated (there is definitely ambiguity w/ the use of "paper" here- toilet paper vs. writing paper) in the below example found at: http://hkjtefl.tesolteachers.org/2005-Nunn-Humor.html.

Mrs. Richards: Hallo! (Polly emerges) Girl. There’s no paper in my room. Why don’t you check these things? That’s what you’re being paid for, isn’t it?

Polly: Well, we don’t put it in the room.

Mrs. Richards: What?

Polly: We keep it in the lounge.

Mrs. Richards: In the lounge?!!

Polly: (really trying to help) I’ll get you some. Do you want plain or ones with our address on it?

Mrs. Richards: Address on it?!!

Polly: How many sheets? (Mrs. Richards looks appalled) How many are you going to use?

Mrs. Richards: (hitting the bell) Manager!!

Page 340, question 3: The book does not say that sentence a) has a normal interpretation. I disagree. Depending on the context it can. Most of the time I would say "take it there" or "bring it here." Imaginge though two people looking over a map, and one person is telling the other to deliver let's say a new car to his house. If I were the first person I would say, "Take it here," pointing to where my house is located on the map.

I have a question about Tuesday's homework. On question 2b the book classifies "at once" as temporal deixis (gestural). I understand the temporal classification but not so much the gestural. "At once" to me means "now," which is clearly temporal. Where does the gestural come into play? I don't feel it's necessary to be looking at someone to understand "Come out from behind there at once, Smith!" If anything, I think the gestural classification should go with  "there," which the book does classify it as such- "spatial deixis (gestural-the distinction is sometimes hard to apply). Personally, I would apply the gestural classification to "there" way before I would to "at once."

On the test yesterday we were given some food items with GOE ratings and the category BREAKFAST. I remember one of the items being green beans. Now to some people grean beans is not a breakfast food. However, I know I've eaten them for breakfast before for lack of food in my pantry (as sad as that is). So in a way I can say that yes it could be a breakfast food, at least on that day. I think the beans received a GOE of 7, which I thought was a little harsh because some people might give them a higher number. I say this mostly to reiterate how subjective I think the GOEs are.

Lexical deals with the meaning(s) associated with a word? Ex:  "dog" is a canine creature. Grammatical deals more with the meanings of words with relation to the rest of the words surrounding it? Ex: "The boy took the chilled milk out of the blazing inferno." This doesn't make sense; there's semantic clash. Is this an example of grammatical semantics?

Ch. 15 briefly talks about gender in language and states that English displays natural gender "(in so far as it has gender at all- it only affects pronominal reference)" (Cruse, 283). I know that as the English language interacted with that of the Norse tribes in the 700s and 800s it began to lose its inflectional endings; I'm curious to know if English ever used grammatical gender.

acocrnidg to an Engslih uvirnestiy sdtuy the order of lertets in a word dsnoet matetr the olny tnhig tthas ioramtnpt is taht the frsit and lsat letetr of evrey word is in the cocrret ptsoioin The rset can be julbemd and one is stlil albe to raed the txet wuoitht dflcitfiuy

Since we are in a class about word meanings and what words are I thought it would be neat to post the above (taken from http://flumpcakes.co.uk/php/jumbled-up ). I find it interesting that we can perfectly distinguish this and actually read it with ease. Decipherment below: 

according to an English university study the order of letters in a word doesnt matter the only thing thats important is that the first and last letter of every word is in the correct position The rest can be jumbled and one is still able to read the text without difficulty