Michael Hall’s Friends and Family

blogs for project

nobody@vox.com(Ryan Hendrickson) — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:32:56 -0700

I'm thinking about looking at these posts:

Taxes! - adjacent pairs

Movie Reviews - performative verbs

Tautologies galore! - Place name tautologies

Trees - sense relations across languages

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Do you like?

nobody@vox.com(Alison Gannon) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 19:50:16 -0700

I'm going to a big Swing and Lindy Hop dance party saturday night and I am sooo excited. I even went out to buy a new outfit so I look the part. Well, I came home and my parents and brother were sitting chatting and I told them about the clothes I got and where i was going on saturday. My dad said well go upstairs and change so you can show us. I think he was just humoring my enthusiasm but I changed into my Lindy outfit anyway. When I reentered the room I twirled and said "Do you like?" My mom answered first saying "oh yes. that's such a nice skirt....." My brother and dad just sat staring at me. I twirled again to show mom the back again and asked them again "Do you like it?" My brother kinda nodded and my dad smiled and said yes. My mom could tell I wasn't getting the response I desired from them so she spoke on their behalf with "They like it honey." Now either they remained silent because the outfit was hidious and looked bad on me or that it was breathtaking and caused them to be speechless. Or, being guys, they didn't care much. What do you all think the implicature of their silence was? I think they definetly were flauting the maxim of manner because they were being ambiguous with their nods and gazing. Also, flauting the maxim of quantity because they didn't give an appropriate response to my question. Do you all agree?

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Group project!

nobody@vox.com(Ryan Hendrickson) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 19:21:42 -0700

Just wondering about when everyone could get together so that we could work on our group project. I suppose it's about time that we get to working on it!

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Pushing Daisies

nobody@vox.com(Ryan Hendrickson) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 19:20:55 -0700

Without question, one of the cutest shows on TV these days. Also a very good example of many of the things we talk about in class:

There is a narrator that often comes in and explains the words of the characters, such as here:

Chuch: what's wrong?

Ned: nothing.

Narrator: He said nothing, meaning I accidentally killed your father and I want to tell you but I can't tell you.

This really sounds like the analyses we've been doing in class.

Also, there is maxim flauting for politeness:

Candy store owner: Do you like excitement?

Ned: I think excitement is better than a lot of things.

He avoids the truth in order to be polite here.

Just thought there were some really good examples here!

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Taxes!!!!

nobody@vox.com(Ryan Hendrickson) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 19:17:31 -0700

I saw a commercial the other day about taxes and it really fit with what we've been talking about with adjacent pairs this week!

A guy walks up to a girl and asks: do you know what time it is?

she replies (yelling): yes, of course I know what time it is!!!!

this is of course not the expected response, but she is upset because she has yet to get her taxes finished. It was pretty funny actually.

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Vitamins or no vitamins?

nobody@vox.com(Alison Gannon) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 18:48:32 -0700

So I haven't been feeling very healthy lately. Not sure if it's a cold or just allergies but I've been taking some allergy medicine and its been helping some of my symptoms. My mom nags me alot when I'm not feeling good to make sure, as if I'm still a child, that i'm drinking fluids, taken medicine and gettiing lots of rest. Below is part of a conversation I had with her the other night.

Me: (cough several times and clear my throat)

Mom: Are you taking your centrum I got you the other day?

Me: I work at 9 tomorrow. (addressed to both mom and dad)

Mom: Are you taking the vitamins I got you?

Me: No

Mom: well you should be taking them everyday.

Me: (laugh) you just saw that centrum commercial didn't you?

Mom: (looks back at T.V)

Me: (clears throat)

Mom: Are you taking your Alavert?

Me: they're 24 hours

Mom: well make sure you remember to take it.

As you can see there are several implicatures and flauted conversation maxims. For one, my utterance to my mom's question of whether or not I took my centrum vitamin today is flauting the maxim of relevance. My working tomorrow has nothing to do with the my vitamins so i do not answer her question. Also, the implicature of my response "they're 24 hours" to my mom's question is "No. I can't take it yet because I've taken one already sometime within that time restriction prohibiting me from taking another one at this point in time." It was just easier to say what I said, lol.

Can you all find any other implicatures, explicatures, or maxims within the conversation?

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Silence

nobody@vox.com(Karen Francis) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 12:58:42 -0700

After reading the article about silence in Japanese conversation I found myself thinking about it. When you are face to face empty silence doesn't really exist because you can pick up on non-verbal cues such as smiling, nodding but what about the phone. My sister called me today to make sure I got "the message" about "the party". After replying "yes", the awkward silence ensued. For 3 minutes, yes I counted there were no words spoken, did she fall asleep? This is what I consider silence in converstion.

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"The" Party

nobody@vox.com(Karen Francis) — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 12:53:36 -0700

So yesterday I received a voicemail from my sister declaring, "The party is at 2 p.m. at the house". After listening to this I started thinking about the explicatures of this statement.

"the party", whose party? My niece's birthday was last month, is the party for her?

2 p.m., ok nice, today, yesterday, Saturday, with Cingular I have received messages a week after it was left so this needed some clarifying.

"the house", who's house? My sister's house, my mom's house, my house, yikes!!!

People really need to think about the messages they leave. LOL

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Principle of Relevance

nobody@vox.com(cog) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 08:32:01 -0700

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?

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Yesterday we talked a little...

nobody@vox.com(cog) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 08:26:23 -0700

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?

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