“A Plea for Excuses” online
Posted on:: November 17th, 2004
Steve Kruba has discovered an online version of John Austin’s classic essay, “A Plea for Excuses,” which I mentioned a few days ago. In it, Austin shows that our casual, ordinary use of excuse terms is actually quite precise and subtle…but when experts use those terms, they get all bollixed up.
This is where Austin asks us to consider the differences between:
a1 He clumsily trod on the snail.
a2 Clumsily he trod on the snail.
b1 He trod clumsily on the snail.
b2 He trod on the snail clumsily.
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a1 stumble
a2 smoosh
b1 smoosh
b2 stumble
That’s what I get out of the exercise.
As the author notes, all the sentences can be interpreted the opposite way to his original analysis, depending on inflexion or commas:
Footnote “14: As a matter of fact, most of these examples can be understood the other way, especially if we allow ourselves inflexions of the voice, or commas, or contexts. a2 might be a poetic inversion for b2: b1, perhaps with commas round the ‘clumsily’, might be used for a1: and so on. Still, the two senses are clearly enough distinguishable.”
My favourite example of a sentence which can change dramatically with inflexion, commas and question marks is:
(a) What would you with the King?
and
(b) What! Would you? With the King!!