Alicia Pruett’s blog

So as I was watching the movie Lucky Number Slevin today at home, I couldn't help but notice all of the linguistic twists, or play on words, or catchy phrases that are scattered all throughout the movie.  One of the conversations that actually made me laugh however was when Josh Harttnet (Slevin) was talking to the gangster he is working for about how he is going to get into the apartment of the man he is planning to murder.  It is known that this man that is to be murdered is a homosexual.  So Slevin asks the gangster, "How am I going to get into the place?  I can't exactly go in the front door."  And the gangster replies, "No I was thinking you'd use the backdoor."  Haha, what exactly did this comment mean?  Was he to literally use the backdoor, or was he supposed to get in the apartment by making "friends" with the man?

So I was trying to come up with something to write about in my blogs and it was taking me quite a while until I finally figured this one out.  So in the topic of flauting conversational maxims, I thought of how probably my most favorite one to flaut would be that of quantity.  Being a girl, this made me think of Dane Cook's stand up when he talked about girls and how they always "over exaggerate" with numbers, aka flauting the quantity maxim.  For example, "that box weighed 10,000 pounds" when in reality everyone knows the box didn't weigh 10,000 pounds.  Or "that took a million years", when really it probably only took an hour.  It made me laugh because he kind of made the connection that it is rare that I hear a male flaut the quantity maxim to the extent that females do.  

So I ran into another example dealing with politeness this past week with another friend.  However this one, I do not know as well.  In this case I chose to be postively polite but at the same time I definately flauted a conversation maxim of quality.  I was hanging out with a girl and she said how much she loved cheesecake.  I told her that I actually make a really good cheesecake and if she wanted I could make one for her some time.  She loved the idea but then states, "I love cherries, will you put cherries on top instead of strawberries?  Don't you just love cherries?"  Oh boy did I not know how to respond, because personally I hate cherries.  So what did I do?  I flauted quality somewhat ambiguously, of course.  I said "Yes, of course!"  Ha I thought I was rather clever.  Without saying that I liked or didn't like cherries I simply answered yes which, in my mind, I was responding to making her a cherry cheesecake, but in her mind, who knows, maybe she thought I said yes to loving cherries as well.

So I ran into another example dealing with politeness this past week with another friend.  However this one, I do not know as well.  In this case I chose to be postively polite but at the same time I definately flauted a conversation maxim of quality.  I was hanging out with a girl and she said how much she loved cheesecake.  I told her that I actually make a really good cheesecake and if she wanted I could make one for her some time.  She loved the idea but then states, "I love cherries, will you put cherries on top instead of strawberries?  Don't you just love cherries?"  Oh boy did I not know how to respond, because personally I hate cherries.  So what did I do?  I flauted quality somewhat ambiguously, of course.  I said "Yes, of course!"  Ha I thought I was rather clever.  Without saying that I liked or didn't like cherries I simply answered yes which, in my mind, I was responding to making her a cherry cheesecake, but in her mind, who knows, maybe she thought I said yes to loving cherries as well.

So I ran into a situation the other day with my roommate that made me think of politeness and how it depends on who you are talking to, to decide the appropriate level of politeness.  She recently just purchased a new hand soap for her bathroom and after using it, she said "Don't you love my new soap!"  Hmmm was I in a situation.  Do I go with the usual response she was looking for and say "yes, I love it" or do I tell the truth?  Well I chose to take the more bald approach with positive politeness and be completely honest, because she is my best friend, and tell her "No, I really don't like your soap much at all because it reminds me of a certain time that I really just dont want to remember anymore."  I'm not sure if she was offended or not.  My guess is no.  I'm pretty honest all the time.  It felt more polite to me to be honest than to flaut the conversational maxim of quality and lie.

So I ran into a situation the other day with my roommate that made me think of politeness and how it depends on who you are talking to, to decide the appropriate level of politeness.  She recently just purchased a new hand soap for her bathroom and after using it, she said "Don't you love my new soap!"  Hmmm was I in a situation.  Do I go with the usual response she was looking for and say "yes, I love it" or do I tell the truth?  Well I chose to take the more bald approach with positive politeness and be completely honest, because she is my best friend, and tell her "No, I really don't like your soap much at all because it reminds me of a certain time that I really just dont want to remember anymore."  I'm not sure if she was offended or not.  My guess is no.  I'm pretty honest all the time.  It felt more polite to me to be honest than to flaut the conversational maxim of quality and lie.

So I was in a restaurant the other day and their emergency exit sign said "exit here" in red bold letters.  However, there was no door.  You first had to walk down the hallway to reach the door to then be able to "exit here" or there for that matter.  I just thought it was odd and it made me think of the example in class when she talked about the airplane seat with the sign on the window saying the seat doesn't recline.  This makes you realize how important the location of the reference is.  And then do people just assume that we can figure out the rest as long as they just point us in the general direction? 

So as we were going over locutions and illocutionary acts in class she used the example of I'm sorry.  This made me think of the simple saying "please".  Obviously the locution please has the logical illocutionary meaning of implying kindness or graciousness or asking nicely.  It can also imply sarcasm or even hopelessness in the sense of replacing it with "yea right".  The biggest one that I thought was most different, that I noticed to be a location issue maybe, is using it to request the speaker to repeat or state again what he/she just said.  I notice this mostly at home in Cincinnati.  I will say something and someone will say "please?"  As if please repeat yourself maybe?  I'm always like please what?

As we were talking about spatial deixis in class the other day we answered the question "Where's the dog?"  One of the answers was "The dog is (to the) east of the car."  The explanation for this was that it wouldn't matter the position of either the speaker or the listener, just as long as one or the other knew which direction east was.  However, the more I thought about it, I had questions.  When dealing with direction must we always take into account the accurate directions of North, South, East and West, or in some cases should it not matter?  If I don't know the exact direction of east can't I pinpoint or locate something east of my position?  Even though it may not properly be east in the geographical world, it is still east to me when explaining the location of something.  Or does that then just make things too confusing?  To me, I rarely know what the proper direction is when dealing with North, South, East and West, so I would automatically assume if I were the listener that whoever was speaking to me was giving me a direction from their position.  Hmmmm...... directions.

As we were talking about spatial deixis in class the other day we answered the question "Where's the dog?"  One of the answers was "The dog is (to the) east of the car."  The explanation for this was that it wouldn't matter the position of either the speaker or the listener, just as long as one or the other knew which direction east was.  However, the more I thought about it, I had questions.  When dealing with direction must we always take into account the accurate directions of North, South, East and West, or in some cases should it not matter?  If I don't know the exact direction of east can't I pinpoint or locate something east of my position?  Even though it may not properly be east in the geographical world, it is still east to me when explaining the location of something.  Or does that then just make things too confusing?  To me, I rarely know what the proper direction is when dealing with North, South, East and West, so I would automatically assume if I were the listener that whoever was speaking to me was giving me a direction from their position.  Hmmmm...... directions.