Relevance violation

Previously I analyzed the following statement from Obama as a case of ambiguity: 

"There are millions of women all across the country who rely on Planned Parenthood for not just contraceptive care; they rely on it for mammograms, for cervical cancer screenings." 

(Contrary to what this might suggest, Planned Parenthood does not provide mammograms, although it does provide access to them.)

I said: "Obama's statement could be interpreted in two ways. Either it means that Planned Parenthood enables people to get mammograms (in which case it is true), or it means that Planned Parenthood provides people with mammograms (in which case it is false). The latter interpretation might be somewhat more likely, and therefore the statement is misleading."

But it might not have been a MERE case of ambiguity. It could also have been a "quiet and unostentatious" violation of Grice's Maxim of Relevance ("Be relevant."). 

(Grice distinguished between several different ways that a maxim could be violated, including 'flouting' -- making it perfectly obvious that you are violating it -- and 'quietly and unostentatiously violating' the maxim. In the latter case, says Grice, "one is liable to mislead." The cases I have discussed so far have all been 'quiet and unostentatious' violations.)

It depends a little bit on what the Question Under Discussion is in this case. One could argue that the Question Under Discussion was such that, if Obama's statement was relevant to it, then his statement must have meant that Planned Parenthood provides people with mammograms. In that case, it would be a quiet and unostentatious violation of Relevance. I'm not sure if this is really a great example of that.

Paul Ryan and the Bowles-Simpson Debt Commission

Paul Ryan was accused of lying by ThinkProgress.org for uttering the following statement (henceforth "the statement"):

[Obama] created a bipartisan debt commission [the Bowles-Simpson commission]. They came back with an urgent report. He thanked them, sent them on their way, and then did exactly nothing. 

(According to ThinkProgress.org, the reason that the statement was a lie is that “Ryan was instrumental in sabotaging the commission, leading the other House Republicans in voting against the plan.”) 

CNN analyzed it as "misleading". I concur. But I would add, "due to a conversational implicature".

It passes all of the tests for a conversational implicature.

Ryan’s statement implies several interconnected things that can be argued to be false. We can concentrate on this one (henceforth "the implicatum"):

Obama’s inaction prevented the Bowles-Simpson plan from being adopted. 

The statement is consistent with the negation of the implicatum; i.e., the inference is cancellable. The following is not a contradiction:

[Obama] created a bipartisan debt commission [the Bowles-Simpson commission]. They came back with an urgent report. He thanked them, sent them on their way, and then did exactly nothing. [This much is actually true.] But Obama’s inaction did not prevent the Bowles-Simpson plan from being adopted [because he didn’t have the votes necessary to pass it].

Someone who said this would not be contradicting themselves. So the inference is cancellable.

Another property of conversational implicatures is that they can be reinforced; that is, it doesn't sound redundant to assert the implicatum after asserting the statement.

[Obama] created a bipartisan debt commission [the Bowles-Simpson commission]. They came back with an urgent report. He thanked them, sent them on their way, and then did exactly nothing. Obama’s inaction prevented the Bowles-Simpson plan from being adopted.

If Paul Ryan said this, it would not sound like he was repeating himself. This further supports the conclusion that the inference is a conversational implicature.

So it was not lying to imply that Obama's inaction prevented the Bowles-Simpson plan from being adopted. What Paul Ryan actually said (maybe not literally, but figuratively) could all be argued to be true. He did create a bipartisan debt commission. They did come back with an urgent report. He did thank them. He did, I suppose, send them on their way. And he did not do anything about it.

It is the implicature that is false. True statement, false implicature => misleading.

How does this implicature arise? That is a more interesting question.

It has to be some kind of quantity implicature. Grice's Maxim of Quantity says:

1. Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange).
2. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.

There is a clear sense that Paul Ryan is leaving out information that is required for the purposes of the exchange, violating Quantity-1.  He tells a story, and the story has a point. The point is that Obama failed in this instance. Any other information relevant to whether or not Obama failed in this instance should be mentioned. The quantity implicature is that there is no other information relevant to this point.

Interesting note: The definitions for all of the Truth-O-Meter's shades of grey include the possibility of a Quantity-1 violation. 

• Mostly True statements "need additional clarification or information". 
• Half True statements "leave out important details or take things out of context". 
• Mostly False statements "ignore critical facts that would give a different impression".

Maybe they have some way of deciding whether something is a mild Quantity-1 violation or a severe one.

Unverifiable yet misleading

There's something I left out of the discussion about the claim that 40% of gun sales are done without a permit. That claim was not merely unverifiable, it was also misleading. It was misleading because the speaker was acting as if he had a solid source for the information. So this is a straight-up violation of Grice's second maxim of Quality. Grice's maxim of Quality ("Try to make your contribution one that is true") had two sub-maxims:

1. Do not say what you believe to be false.
2. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

A cooperative dialogue participant will adhere to both of these maxims. The conversational implicature that people believe and have good evidence for what they say comes about through the assumption that people are being cooperative.

Saying that 40% of the gun sales are done without a permit is saying something for which you lack adequate evidence. It's a violation of Quality-2, as we say in the biz. So although the status of the claim is unverifiable, it is also misleading in the sense that it has a false implicature.

So I have to revise my shades of grey:

• Ambiguous (true on one interpretation, false on another*)
• Unverifiable (more research needed)
• presented as such
• carrying the false Quality-2 implicature of adequate evidence
• True but misleading (carrying a false implicature)

*I think I might have to add a category for "true on one interpretation, unverifiable on another", but I will do that in a separate step.