A Brief Revisit to the Apaches, the Igbos, the Akan and the Finns: Thoughts on the Pragmatics of Silence and the Maxim of Quantity

• Authors: Dennis Kurzon
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The paper attempts to look at silence from the point of view of Grice's maxim of quantity, viz. if one has nothing to say, then one is silent. This will be examined against the background of studies that have been published over the last decades especially anthropological research on tribes in Africa (Igbo and Akan) and North America (Western Apaches), and studies on Finnish silence.

Keywords

EN

silence; maxim of quantity; overinformativeness; pre-industrial; Finns; Western Apaches; Ikbo; Akan

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Journal: Lodz Papers in Pragmatics
• Year: 2012
• Volume: 8
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 115-129

Dates

published

2012-06

online

2012-06

Contributors

author

Dennis Kurzon

• University of Haifa, Israel

Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/lpp-2012-0007