I finally finished my final final. I was a bit sad on my way in to the test, as I’m going to have to drop Japanese now in favor of Spanish so that I can work on a Zapotec project in Oaxaca next summer. However, on leaving the test, Spanish didn’t look so bad. I woke up this morning trying to decide which would be a better analogy: Pearl Harbor, or the Bataan Death March. But after looking up the links for these I realized that although I felt bad, it was not nearly so bad as being drowned, starved, beheaded or set on fire. So no WWII analogy. It will suffice to say that I suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of Japanese (not THE Japanese). My other finals went well, with As in both classes.

With all that out of the way, I’m hoping to finally get down to business and do a study of Condoleeza Rice’s testimony before the 9/11 commission, first mentioned here way back on 4/11 (coincidence). I will be examining this transcript of Dr. Rice’s testimony in an effort to determine if there is a correlation between Rice’s deliberate violations of Grice’s Maxims, and interruptions by her interlocutors.

Of course it’s possible that the Bush Administration is its own subculture, and Grice’s Maxims don’t really apply. With this in mind, and based casual observation of the administration’s behavior, I propose a new set of conversational maxims that seems to fit in better with the administration’s agenda: (patterned after this version of Grice’s Maxims)

Rice’s Maxims

(The Uncooperative Principle)

Maxim of Quantity:
1. Make your contribution to the conversation as expansive as necessary (to obfuscate).
2. Do not make your contribution to the conversation informative.

Maxim of Quality:
1. Say what you know to be false.
2. Say that you lacked adequate evidence.

Maxim of Relevance:
Be marginally relevant (i.e., say things tangentially related to the current topic of the conversation).

Maxim of Manner:
1. Obscure avoidance of expression.
2. Indulge ambiguity.
3. Be wordy (avoid unnecessary brevity).
4. Be ornery.


This isn't nearly as timely as it would have been a month ago, but I had other fish to fry.