Ain't pragmatics grand?

[conuly]

Mommy: When are we fixing the fence?
Me: Jenn's having a party next month.

Due to the power of pragmatics, everybody involved in that exchange understands that the first sentence answers the second, even though it doesn't sound like it ought to.

You just gotta love those Gricean maxims. Way back in Lives of Christopher Chant our main character finds himself asked why he's buying girl books. He can't explain that they're to give to a girl goddess who lives in another world, so he says "I have a cousin", telling himself that it's okay because he does have a cousin. Well, it's pretty minor as lies go, and harmless, but he knows and the reader knows that he certainly isn't telling the truth, because what he said isn't relevant and he's given his friend no reason to suspect that. It doesn't matter how many cousins he has, the books aren't for any of them.

Comments

[lilysea]

Or more sinisterly:

a pharmaceutical company was giving evidence into an inquiry about the high cost of insulin.

When asked why insulin cost so much, the company talked about a new, life-saving drug, therefore implying that high insulin costs paid for the development of new life saving drugs.

But the new life-saving drug had been developed by publicly funded/government-funded research, and the pharmaceutical company had had nothing to do with it.

Now, they didn't claim out right that they HAD funded the research.

But when you say
"Why does insulin cost so much"
and the company answers by talking about a new life saving drug,

they are clearly implying a connection.

[conuly]

YES THAT.

[siderea]

So, this whole conversation is fascinating to me because it's illuminating something about one of my superpowers.

It would seem that it's in how I relate to the Gricean maxims that some of my... cognitive difference... may be most rooted.

Or put another way: Oh, hey, there's terms to describe that phenomenon, which I have heretofore thought of as That Thing That Is A Security Hole In Neurotypical People's Minds.

If you had asked me a second before I read this, I would have told you vaguely (infuriatingly vaguely to both you and me) that there are certain kinds of logical incongruity in utterances that I am hypersensitive to, and I would tell you about a thing that happens in my head - we might describe it, for the lack of better, as a "cognitive sensation" - that I call "the Static". But, now, I would venture at least one specific flavor of logical incongruity which triggers that thing in my head is exactly this: answers to a question which don't actually answer the question; in particular, those which are trying to perpetrate a deceit by implication through exploiting pragmatics (or what I would have called the tendency to epistemic or semiotic closure).

Because I gotta tell you, when I notice one of these, it's like it's on fire. I don't know that I always notice them, but it's very clear to me that I notice them way, way, way, WAY than most people. And it's not a product of conscious scrutiny, looking for incongruities or things that could be gaps in truthfulness. I can do that too (same as anyone can), but I'm talking about something else. I don't have to look for them. When they happen, at least a lot of the time, it's immediately the most salient, most arresting thing about what someone said. I can't help but notice.

At the orientation for my third internship, which was a clinical after-school program for "at risk urban girls", one of the brave and reasonably woke interns, who like all(?) the interns was ostensibly white, asked the black and latina program managers about the handling the dynamics of this being mostly white program staff working with predominantly black kids. The black manager replied, as I recall it (and this is my attempt at an exact restatement), "Really, with our kids in this program, it's really about class." And everyone kinda laughed with relief and moved on. And there I was thinking, "Um. That... may be true, but (1) doesn't answer the original question, (2) just raises the question of how to handle the class dynamic, which (3) you didn't answer either, (4) is not in any way exclusive of the first question, and (5) does not in any way address the issue, much less render it resolved such that the conversation is done, contrary to how you seem to intend it to be taken. I wonder if she knew when she said it if it would have that effect on the intern class? Yeeeeeeah, there's no way she couldn't have known. That was a deliberate maneuver to shut that line of questioning down. I wonder why she doesn't want us talking about this elephant in the room?"

[conuly]

See, now, I would have doggedly pursued that question until I got an acceptable answer.

[siderea]

Not if you grew up with this superpower you wouldn't. I've had a near fifty year training course from life and nature that that fence always has electricity running through it. The first right move is to not say anything – for now.

[conuly]

The right move, sure, but the interesting move?