My friend M., a professional writer, mentioned that she works with people who demand flyers for completely non-flyer-appropriate things. I thought she could take to making, hanging, and distributing flyers that announce things that reflect the status quo: "This week, the elevator will stop on (X) floors," or "Remember: tomorrow is Wednesday," in order to foment a slight sense of unease.
I was charmed to realize that this (theoretical) sense of unease emanates from Paul Grice's Maxim of Quantity - be as informative as required, and no more. His conversational maxims, shockingly, were developed to help explain the pragmatics of conversation, but it would be interesting to explore them in other contexts.
I'd love to write a paper on flyers. And then condense the paper into a flyer, and send to M. Also, M., if we worked together we could get all Five Obstructions on flyers...
About Me
- Lore & Ipsum
- I'm interested in language, grammar, cooking, rhetoric, discourse, design, taxonomies, food, conversation & interaction analysis, girl things, cognitive science, finding a job, and large bodies of water.
12 comments:
You have the best flyer ideas...it is now my goal in life to make at least one flyer breaking each of the Gricean maxims. It just seems like a good career move.
Hockey related meta humor.
It would be funny to put up flyers that just said "Philadelphia"
I'm sure many of the fine people who read these comments won't get hat: and that's OK.
(sorry, no balderdash with this comment)
Sorry I meant to type 'that' not 'hat'. I'm sure most poeple are wearing hats.
The Philadelphia Fliers reminds me of when you said you wanted to mail an envelope addressed: DKNY and include a note saying "I just wanted to see if this worked."
xujqoi (shoozchoy): a chichi Chinese restaurant in Brooklyn.
See I forgot about that one too!!
gncyzm: vitamin enriched 'male stuff'
Shouldn't there be more comments?
Hey! I don't go to your blog and get all "shouldn't there be more comments?"!
Yes. Yes there should.
As a show of support for my dear L&I, I am hereby commenting. There. Now there's another comment. Blink.
I should be grading.
I am really starting to like this karitas person.
Word Verification:
ogfymf - Oh, good for you, mother fucker.
Wow, that's quite a Word Verification. Should we start a Word Verification blog? And people can leave their suggestions in the comments?
Also, you've met Karitas, and you liked her.
OK--I am really continuing to like this karitas person
I like the idea of a word verification blog with word verification turned off.
And we could also start a spam blog thereby rendering all spam comments not spam.
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