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19. DIALOGUE NO.19 Context:
This conversation takes place in Houses office. He is standing behind his desk, facing the office windows, and Wilson is calmly leaning against the wall to
Houses left. As the conversation progressed, House started to face Wilson a lot more, and vice versa. Chase had presumably been back from the pharmacy and
told House that the medicine that the pharmacist dispensed was cough medicine and not colchicine. House asks Wilson if it bothered him, and Wilson responded
with U19.1.
Overview:
This conversation is similar to the one that happened in dialogue 14, except that in dialogue 14 House was deliberately choosing to respond to the surface meaning of
U14.1. In this dialogue, Wilson chooses to respond the more unlikely association
of House’s ambiguous ‘this’ in “This doesn’t bother you?”. Implicature Analysis:
U19.1 That you were wrong? I try to work through the pain. Infringes maxim
of relevance and quality, flouts Maxim of relevance and quality Although House was not really specific when he said “This doesn’t bother you?”,
it would take a tremendous lack of pragmatic competence – which Wilson does not – to fail to understand the context, that what House is distraught over was the
fact that the medicine dispensed was not colchicine. Wilson was in fact deliberately making an irrelevant comment using the lax in the contextual
specifics to shift the subject to House’s bruised ego. Although it is unclear
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82 whether or not House’s ego was bruised on the discovery that he was wrong,
making House look like he is really distraught over an exaggerated ego is funny. The fact that House actually does display an ample amount of arrogance also
makes this utterance a playful ego jab. Wilson then flouts the truth when he adds
that sympathetic ‘I’m-trying-to-work-through-the-pain’ part to add strength to the ego jab. It is very clear to House that Wilson is really just making fun of his
frustration since the sympathy Wilson gave was dedicated to an imagined and humorous ego bruising. U19.1 thus implements both maxim infringing and
maxim flouting, creating an irrelevant and untrue situation, and then using sarcasm to display mock sympathy.
U19.2 So… reality was wrong. Flouts maxim of quality and quantity
When House denies being wrong, Wilson produced U19.2 in a consenting tone. Clearly, U19.2 is absurd, in whatever situations. The fact that Wilson was saying
this in response to House’s denial means a different interpretation is in order. Wilson was actually deliberately flouting the truth to reflect House’s denial.
Reality is always right, and House’s denial of reality signals that he is blinded. In
this case, Wilson continues the implicature he manufactured in U19.1 and mocks House for having an ego that is bigger than even reality for being unwilling
to see that his theory is wrong . The masking of this second ego jab using mock
consent was meant to add keep the situation solemn and funny at the same time.
In other words, the implicature of U19.2 would be something like: “Ah… So reality was wrong. I see. Wow, your ego is really bigger than life” The fact that
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83 House then no longer gets obsessed about his theory of cough medicine –
colchicine mix up indicates that this implicature is well conveyed perfectly.
20. DIALOGUE NO.20 Context:
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