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Re: USAGE: mandatory veracity & pygectomy (was: RE: USAGE: WOMYN (was: RE:

From:And Rosta <a-rosta@...>
Date:Thursday, May 30, 2002, 0:56
John Cowan
> And Rosta scripsit: > > > Lojban attitudinals > > are like 'ouch' and 'wow' -- they *express* emotion and attitude > > without making truth-conditional claims, yes, but as with the > > English interjections one may use them without really the emotion > > or ironically. > > Unlike the ironic uses of Eng. intj., though, this is highly > un-Gricean and ought not to be done. > > > Lojban community does comprise some who wish to police our usage > > so that all Lojban usage is most puritanically literal -- > > I think one need not be committed to literalism to believe that > truth-telling is good, lying is bad, and that lying with attitudinals > is a more fundamental form of lying than lying with truth-functional > statements, where irony is always a possibility.
That is so, but it remains the case that to be nonliteral is not necessarily to lie, since it may fail to deceive and/or lack the intent to deceive. There is nothing un-Gricean about nonliteral exclamations or, say, nonliteral facial expressions; we use them all the time to griceanly communicate. What makes the Livagian situation different is that there is a taboo against gricean circumventions of literalness, because it devalues the linguistic coin, and forces on all meaning the uncertainties of contextual contingency. --And.