International Journal of Applied Linguistics & English Literature

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Grice’s Conversational Implicature: A Pragmatics Analysis of Selected Poems of Audre Lorde

Adaoma Igwedibia*
Department of English and Literary Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka., Enugu State, Nigeria
Corresponding Author: Adaoma Igwedibia, E-mail: adaoma.igwedibia@unn.edu.ng

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Article history A number of works have been done by scholars on the study and interpretation of Audre Lorde’s
Received: August 20, 2017 poetry, especially through the lens of literary and critical analysis. However, Lorde’s poems have
Accepted: October 27, 2017 not been analyzed pragmatically. A lot may have been written about Lorde’s poetry, but there is
absolutely no evidence of a pragmatics study of her work. Lorde is the author of many poems
Published: January 05, 2018
that have been studied in various theoretical dimensions, but none have been done with reference
Volume: 7 Issue: 1
to their pragmatics implications. The problem which this research recognizes, therefore, is that
Advance access: December 2017 Lorde’s poems, especially the ones under the present study, have not been studied and interpreted
using Grice’s theory of Conversational Implicature (Cooperative Principle) which is comprised
the four maxims: the maxims of Quantity, Quality, Manner and Relation. This study seeks to
Conflicts of interest: None discover the extent to which these maxims could be applied to the reading of the selected poems
Funding: None of Lorde. It also seeks to ascertain the degree to which Lorde’s selected poems violate or adhere
to these maxims. The study has found that Audre Lorde in some of her poems, violates the
maxims as well as adheres to them both in the same breath.

Key words: Conversational Implicature, Pragmatics, Grice, Poems, Maxims, Cooperative

Principles, Audre Lorde, Context

INTRODUCTION seeks to investigate the features of the speech context em-

Experiences have shown that what people say or write is not bedded in the poetic lines in Audre Lorde’s poems, arguing
always what they actually mean. Quite often, speakers’ or that context helps determine which proposition is expressed
by a given poetic line. The meaning of those lines can be
authors’ utterances or writings mean much more than what
regarded as a function from a context, including time, place,
they actually literally say or write. For instance, a speaker
and possible worlds shared by both poet and readers, into
who sends someone on an errand might say, “If you like,
a proposition, where, as Robert C. Stalnaker (1972, p. 383)
don’t come back today.” This statement might have the
argues, a proposition is a function from a possible world into
implied meaning of, “Return as soon as possible or come
a truth value. In other words, the study investigates aspects
back very quickly.” This is in line with the view of Jenny
of meaning involved in the interaction between a poetic ex-
Thomas (1995, p. 1) who posits that “people do not always pression’s context of utterance and the interpretation of ele-
or even usually say what they mean.” He illustrates this with ments within that expression. An important aspect of Audre
these examples: “it’s hot in here.” This statement is open to Lorde’s language use in her poetry is one that takes context
varying interpretations. For someone who came into a room into account as an essential part in the construction of mean-
with the windows shut, this might mean ‘please open the ing.
window.’ Or it might mean, ‘Is it alright if I open the win- Returning to Grice, one of his two most influential con-
dow?’ Or ‘You’re wasting electricity.’ What someone says at tributions to the study of language and communication is his
times can be the complete opposite of what he or she means. theory of meaning, which he began to develop in his article
Thomas suggests that people can mean something quite dif- “Meaning,” written in 1948 but published only in 1957 at the
ferent from what their words suggest. prodding of his colleague, P. F. Strawson (Wikipedia) Grice
The preceding exposition lays out the problem of mean- further develop his theory of meaning in the 5th and 6th of his
ing in context, specifically how context contributes to mean- William James lectures on “ Logic and Conversation,” de-
ing. Grice, writing on the same subject, studies a sort of livered at Harvard in 1967. These two lectures were initially
talk-in-interaction, raising questions such as: do speakers published as “Utterer’s Meaning and Intentions” in 1969 and
mean what they say, or say what they mean? In other words, “Utterer’s Meaning, Sentence Meaning, and Word Meaning”
he studies context-dependent aspects of meaning. We will in 1968, and were later collected with the other lectures as
return to Grice momentarily. Meanwhile the present study the first section of Studies in the Way of Words in 1989. But

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Copyright (c) the author(s). This is an open access article under CC BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijalel.v.7n.1p.120
Grice’s Conversational Implicature: A Pragmatics Analysis of Selected Poems of Audre Lorde 121

Grice’s most groundbreaking contribution to philosophy a sentence, concentrating, instead, on the contextual level
and linguistics is his theory of implicature which started in of meaning. In speech and writing, the choice of words and
his 1961 article, “The Causal Theory of Perception,” and is sentences depends fully on the speaker or the writer, leaving
most fully developed in his 1967 “Logic and Converation.” the reader or the hearer with information he/she has passed
According to Grice (1967), what a speaker means by an ut- on or written.
terance can be divided into what the speaker “says” and what Audre Lorde’s poetic language generates internal mean-
the speaker thereby “implicates.” This results in what Grice ing. In particular, this study seeks to examine and analyze
calls Conversational Implicature. To conversationally impli- the deeper, inferred “ social force” of language in Lorde’s
cate something, according to Grice, is to mean something poems. The clearest way Lorde communicates her ideas and
that goes beyond what one says in such a way that it must thoughts is through language. To achieve this, the ideas and
be inferred from non-linguistic features of a conversational thoughts she wishes to communicate become encoded either
situation together with general principles of communication phonologically (by the sound of the spoken words) or graph-
and cooperation. To Grice, a conversational implicature, is, ically (through marks on a printed page). When this meaning
therefore, something which is implied in converasation, that is conveyed semantically, the encoded meaning___the words,
is, something which is left implicit in actual language use. In phrases and sentences Lorde creates___can be easily decod-
other words, implicature provides some explicit account of ed without particular thought of the context. Sometimes,
how it is possible to mean more than what is actually said. however, a deeper, inferred meaning is also encoded within
Grice then goes on to propound his theory of implicature her language, and this creates a pragmatic force within the
which he calls the Cooperative Principle. The Cooperative text. Thus, this study rests on the proposition that whenever
Principle, according to Grice is a norm governing all coop- Lorde writes or says something semantically in her writing,
erative interactions among humans and it consists of four she means to infer extra force to her utterance.
conversational maxims. Surface readers of Lorde’s poems ignore the pragmatic
From the foregoing, one could simply ask the question force of her language in their analysis and thus lose many
as to why the speakers’ utterance can mean different things critical marks and deeper levels of meaning in her writing.
at different times on different occasions. Another question is This study hopes to correct this imbalance or this neglect.
how do we interpret what the words actually mean on a cer- An example will make this clear. In her poem “The Black
tain specific occasion? And why don’t people just say what Unicorn,” we read the following lines:
they mean? According to Thomas (1995, p. 1-3), several in- The black unicorn is greedy.
teresting questions arise from observations. He asserts: “If The black unicorn is impatient.
speakers regularly mean something other than what they say, The black unicorn was mistaken
how is it that people manage to understand one another if a for a shadow.
single group of words such as “it’s hot in here” could mean The meaning these lines embody will very much de-
so many different things at different times, [in different con- pend upon the social and historical circumstances in which
texts], how do we work out what it actually does mean on they are couched. It is the adjectives___‘greedy,’ ‘impatient,’
one occasion as opposed to the other? And why don’t people and‘mistaken’ that, in certain social/historical situations, will
just say what they mean? To him, these and many other sim- carry different levels of force. In other words, they are prag-
ilar issues are addressed within the area of linguistics known matically loaded words whose meaning can only be inferred
as pragmatics. Simply put, pragmatics is a field of study that by the context of the language use. For instance, the poet in
shows how language is used to send messages that are not the preceeding lines just quoted employs the striking images
directly related to the additive value of the raw linguistic of a greedy and impatient protester to infer the urgency of
data of the utterance. Thomas (1995, p. 1-2) posits that “in the situation, that of social justice. Pragmatics meanings can
the early 1980s, when it became common to discuss prag- be inferred in this way because, owing to the context of the
matics in general textbooks on linguistics, the most common language use, careful analytical readers are able to read into
definition of pragmatics was: meaning in use or meaning in a word the extra meaning__the utterances’ pragmatic force__
context, in other words, contextualized meaning. conferred upon it by the way it is used within a particular
Patrick Griffiths (2006, p. 1) sees semantics as social situation.
the study of the “toolkit” for meaning: knowledge en- The application of pragmatics to Audre Lorde’s poems
coded in the vocabulary of language and in its patterns allows us to see how language is used in interesting and so-
for building more elaborate meanings, up to the level cial ways: knowing that a listener or reader of Lorde’s poems
of sentence meanings. Pragmatics [on the other hand] shares certain knowledge with the poet by allowing his or
is concerned with the use of these tools in meaningful her conversation with the poet/speaker to be more personal,
communication. Pragmatics is about the interaction of lively or less extended. It also allows us to use words and
semantic knowledge with our knowledge of the world, give them inferred elements such as power aspects, because
taking into account contexts of use. Lorde’s listener/reader is aware of her social standing. Simi-
The above definition shows that semantics is concerned larly, Lorde’s poetic language can act in ideological ways to
with meaning at the level of the formal meaning, which is reinforce African American societal values, again pragmat-
more or less the literal meaning of a sentence. Pragmat- ically. The following lines from Lorde’s poem, “From the
ics, on the other hand, goes beyond the literal meaning of House of Yemanja”:
122 IJALEL 7(1):120-129

where she cooked up her daughters LITERATURE REVIEW

into girls.
Review of Relevant Literature in the Field
before she fixed our dinner.
My mother had two faces and a frying pot A pragmatics account of literature makes it clear that in liter-
require more than a semantic analysis to reveal the in- ary communication we not only have a literary text, but also
tended meaning of the words and phrases. This study rests the emotive effects of literary interpretation which include
on the assumption that Lorde’s poems are about the inter- the needs, wishes, desires, likings and feelings of the author.
section of language and power, just as they underscore or Pragmatics, as we know it, is that level of linguistic analysis
exemplify the important areas of pragmatics. The implicit which studies meaning in context. Yule (as cited by Osisan-
understanding of a power relationship between, for instance, wo, 2003, p. 55), asserts that pragmatics is “concerned with
two speakers in an interlocution, is often indicated by the the study of meaning as communicated by a speaker (or writ-
meaning implied by the language used. And this meaning er) and interpreted by the listener (or reader).” When one
can be very context-dependent. talks about pragmatics, one is simply talking about mean-
The study rests on the conviction that a recognition of ing beyond the linguistic data, that is to say, that pragmat-
speaker intention conditions success in overall interpretation ics takes care of the implied meaning of an utterance which
of Lorde’s poetic utterance. Reboul and Moeschler (1998, could only be inferred within the context. The pragmatics
p. 93) posit that interlocutors [in this case, in Lorde’s poems] of literary communication deals with the kinds of problems,
arrive at a satisfactory interpretation of the utterance, if they such as the kinds of actions accomplished by the production
succeed in recovering the contents that the speaker intend- of the literary text (i.e. the poem), the appropriate conditions
ed to communicate by means of that utterance. For Grice of those actions, and the relationships between the actions
(1975),meaning and intention are never explicit and trans- and their contexts (Van Dijk, 1981, p. 13-16). A text induces
parent; they can only be recovered, thanks to the implicit its interpreter to construct an image, or maybe a set of al-
elements. As has been stated earlier, Lorde’s poems have not ternative images. While the image construction and image
been subjected to detailed pragmatics analysis of the kind revision are going on, the interpreter also tries to figure out
intended by this study. what the creator of the text is doing___ what the nature of the
communication situation is all about. For any successful in-
terpretation, then, the reader has to draw up a set of infer-
Statement of the Problem ences from where the contextual implication can be derived.
Audre Lorde’s writing apparently constitutes a major propel- Understanding and interpreting poetry requires understand-
ling force in the growth of postcolonial and cultural studies. ing and appreciating of historical and social conditions and
Several works have been done by scholars on the study and ideological factors under which the writers find themselves.
interpretation of Lorde’s poems, especially through literary/ Therefore, the pragmatics impact of the poem embraces the
critical analysis. It is quite obvious that Lorde’s poems have totality of the poem, combined with its emotional, intellectu-
not been subjected to a pragmatics analysis. A lot may have al and imaginative appeal (Indede, 2009, p. 107).
been done or said about Lorde’s poems, but to the knowl- Different scholars and critics of literary works have intro-
edge of this researcher, there is absolutely no evidence of duced important notions which either oppose or consent with
the aspect of pragmatics in this regard. Poems are supposed the theory of pragmatics. Among these critics is Emmanuel
to be studied and interpreted using suitable apparatuses. Ngara who considers literary works as communicative utter-
Lorde’s poems have rich pragmatics implications and poten- ances produced by the author and received by the reader (or
tialities that can be better understood when subjected to a hearer), especially when the poem is read aloud. He clearly
deep contextual analysis. The problem which this research maintains that a poem is not like everyday speech in that
recognizes, therefore, is that Lorde’s poems have not been it is patterned in order to give its communicative effects a
studied and interpreted using pragmatics principles. The greater impact. He goes further to say that the impact of a
need to solve this problem has led the researcher to embark poem could be derived from the totality of the poem, from
on the study of the poems based on the theory of Conversa- the weight of its message combined with its emotional, intel-
tional Implicature. lectual and imaginative appeal (p. 14-15).
These views intelligibly coincide with Van Djik’s (1981,
246-247) who observes that not only are the structures of
Objectives of the Study literary texts important, but also their functions as well as
The general objective of this study is to undertake a pragmat- their conditions, their production, processing and reception.
ics interpretation of Lorde’s poems based on the principles The fact remains that poor attention to cognitive analysis of
of conversational implicature. In specific terms, the study is literary communication can bring about poor insight into the
designed to: emotive effects of literary interpretation which involve our
1. Examine the degree to which Audre Lorde’s selected needs, wishes, desires, likings and feelings.
poems violate or adhere to the Maxims of Quantity, H. P Grice was the first scholar to make a distinction be-
Quality, Manner and Relation. tween what the speaker says and what he implies. The idea
2. Provide possible interpretation of selected poems based of “say” is closely tied to the words actually uttered and their
on the violation of Grice’s Cooperative Principles. ordinary meanings, but more so it includes all the references
Grice’s Conversational Implicature: A Pragmatics Analysis of Selected Poems of Audre Lorde 123

and predictions that result from that utterance, and whatev- In her brilliant essay, “Living on the Line: Audre Lorde
er force, direct or indirect, it might have (Martinich, 2008, and Our Dead Behind Us,” Gloria T. Hull avers that Lorde’s
p. 508). It is important to note that most of the poems dis- seemingly essentialist definitions of herself as black/lesbi-
played by the composers are metaphorically expressed. Meta- an/mother/woman are not simple, fixed terms. Rather, she
phorical meaning is therefore not explicit in utterance. In line argues that they represent her ceaseless negotiations of a
with this, John Searle (1969, p. 502) differentiates speaker’s position from which she can speak. Hull proffers examples
meaning when he utters words from sentence and expression of these ceaseless negotiations to the effect that almost as
meanings. For the poet to communicate using metaphorical, soon as she achieves a place of connection, she becomes un-
ironical, and allegorical sentiments, there must be principles easy at the comfortableness (which is, to her, a signal that
according to which he is able to have more than one meaning, something critical is being glossed over) and proceeds to
or something different from what he says, whereby the reader rub athwart the smooth grain to find the roughness and the
using them can understand what he or she means. slant she needs to maintain her difference-defined, complex-
This paper is designed to comprehend the pragmatics of ly constructed self.  Secondly, Hull focuses specifically on
the poetry of Audre Lorde. The study, therefore, employs the Lorde’s poetry volume Our Dead Behind Us which she sug-
Cooperative Principle developed by Grice whose Conversa- gests is in constant motion, with poem after poem enacting
tional Implicature is central to the discussion. Even though a series of displacements. Third, Hull zeroes in on the cover
Grice’s fundamental explanations deal with natural conversa- of Our Dead Behind Us  which consists of “a snapshot of
tions, one should not neglect the fact that the general display the last Dahomean Amazons,” and “three old Black wom-
of his approach to discourse gives room for the analysis of en in draped clothes,” superimposed upon a sea of dark and
literary texts. The conversational strategies in literature and passionate South Africans at a protest demonstration. This
more so in poetry as will be discussed in this study invite an image, Hull contends, projects Lorde’s membership in a
open-ended world in which the reader acts creatively, just like community of struggle which stretches from ancient to mod-
the author, if both of them have to share the meaning and meet ern times, speaking into exclusionary space a transcendent
communication goals (Indede, 2009, p. 108). The literature re- black woman power “released/from the prism of dreaming.”
view in this study is designed to accommodate the pragmatics Rachel A Dudley (2006, p.16-39) follows suit in her
analysis of poetry of and critical works on Audre Lorde. equally illuminating article (“Confronting the Concept of In-
In her essay entitled “A Pragma-Stylistic Analysis of Rob- tersectionality: The Legacy of Audre Lorde and Contempo-
ert Frost’s Poem ‘the Road Not Taken,” Dyah Rochmawati rary Feminist Organizations,”) by asserting that Audre Lorde
attempts an analysis of Robert Frost’s poem, the Road Not is one of many women to criticize second wave feminism
Taken from the perspective of pragmatics and stylistics. He for overlooking issues of intersectionality. In specific terms,
asserts that a pragmatics account of literature assumes that in she critically examines the ways in which Lorde introduced
literary communication we do not only have a text, but also intersectionality into feminist discourse and how feminist
the emotive effects of literary interpretation involving needs, organizations embrace this concept today. The question
wishes, desires, likings and feelings of the author by using Dudley poses is this: have feminist organizations confronted
Grice’s Cooperation Principle. Rochmawati’s analsysis does the concept of intersectionality within their work; in other
not include any pragmatics analysis of Audre Lorde’s poetry, words, do they account for the multidimensionality of wom-
and so creates a gap that needs to be filled. en’s lives while fighting for economic, political and social
Florence Indede (2009) in her article entitled “The Prag- equality; and do they see inter-sectionality as a central tenet
matics of Kiswahili Literary Political Discourse” attempt a of feminist organizing. All these questions, argues Dudley,
pragmatics analysis of Kiswahili literary political discourse bring us closer to an understanding of how concepts deemed
using Grice’s Cooperative Principle. She bases her analysis important by a small group can become permanently rele-
on the following poetic texts: Chembe cha Moyo by Alamin vant within feminism and by extension within society.
Mazrui, Sautiya Dhiki by Abdilatif Abdala and Jiho la Ndani Robina Josephine Khalid (2008, p.3-4) in her essay
by Said Ahmed Mohamed. She maintains that her article em- (“Demilitarizing Disease: Ambivalent Warfare and Audre
ploys the Cooperative Principle developed by Grice whose Lorde’s ‘The Cancer Journals,”) presents literary criticism
Conversational Implicature is central to her discussion. She for the 1980 nonfiction work The Cancer Journals by Au-
argues that the interpretation of meaning requires high lev- dre Lorde and offers a discussion of the power and difficulty
el of application of the Cooperative Principle by both the surrounding the issue of breast cancer for women in gen-
reader and the author. Indede avers that the poetic dialog- eral and Audre Lorde in particular. She describes in detail
ic understanding of the author’s theme or message involves how the disease ravages the body and Lorde’s physical and
recognizing his rationale for using an utterance in context. psychological struggle against it. Khalid focuses on Lorde’s
Indede’s analysis, as in Rochmawati’s, provides a robust nonfiction work, The Cancer Journals. There is absolutely
pragmatics analysis of selected Kiswahili political discourse no reference to pragmatics.
poetry, but once again no reference to diaspora poetry in Consuelo Rivera-Fuentes, a Chilean poet, activist, and
general nor to Audre Lorde’s poetry in particular. Hence, lecturer (in “Sister Outsider: An Enduring Vision: Embrac-
there is an existing lacuna that my study will address. ing Myself, My Sister and the ‘Other,’”) reflects on and
The reviews that follow are purely literary and critical anal- reacts to Audre Lorde’s critique of racism within lesbian
yses with no evidence of pragmatic reading of Lorde’s poetry. communities. Her purpose is to honour and rescue Lorde’s
124 IJALEL 7(1):120-129

wonderful insight into the power of words when uttered involves the testing out of two hypotheses. The first is ascer-
and shared by women, as well as her ideas about differ- taining if Lorde in the two poems violates the four maxims
ences and connections that exist between black and white of Grice; and the second involves whether she adheres in the
feminisms. Grounded in her own experience of alienation two poems to the four maxims of Grice. The target popula-
and racism in the European context of Women’s Studies, tion or the sampling group comprises the poems, “ The Black
Rivera-Fuentes then asserts that Lorde’s insistence on a Unicorn” and “From the House of Yemanjá.” It is involved
‘sisterhood’ embraces the ‘other’ and ourselves at the same with the collection and analysis of these poems with special
time. reference to their pragmatic implications in relationship to
Pracheta Bakshi (2014, p.8-13) (in “ Audre Lorde’s Ex- the explanatory variables.
ploration of Her Multiple Selves in Her Biomythography
Zami: A New Spelling of My Name”) argues that Eurocen-
trism, or to be specific, Eurocentric feminism has always Population for the Study
disregarded the female experience of the “Other”___ be it the According to Nworgu (2006, p. 94), a population refers to
socio-political context or the philosophical undercurrent or the “limits within which the research findings are applica-
the mythological projections of African. Therefore, Bakshi ble.” In other words, a population has to do with the ele-
asserts that Audre Lorde in her life writing has radically en- ments to which the results or the outcomes of investigation
deavoured to explore her multiple selves, her radical female are generalizable. The population for this study is, therefore,
subjectivity, insisting that the African Orisha, i.e. the an- the two poems of Audre Lorde under this study.
drogynus, ambiguous, trickster, mythological figure is re-in-
voked in her writings, especially in her poems and her “Bio-
mythography.” Bakshi then concludes by saying that Lorde Sampling
has successfully established her Afro-centric female identity Sampling is the selection of some members or elements from
by discarding the Graeco-Roman mythological tradition as a the population for actual investigation. This selection is ne-
totalizing telos. cessitated by the impracticability of studying the entire pop-
Eric Sipyinyu Njeng ((2007, p.23-36) (in “Lesbian Poet- ulation in most cases (Ohaja, 2003, p. 20). In this work, the
ics and Poetry of AudreLorde”) makes an ontological diag- following poems are selected since all the poems of Lorde
nosis of lesbian experience. Using Audre Lorde as a prime could not be handled in a study of this nature:
example, Njeng argues that for Lorde, lesbianism is natural, • The Black Unicorn
liberating, political and ultimately creative. Lesbianism is • From the House of Yemanjá
natural because, for Audre Lorde, it springs from the primal The selection is based on the fact that these poems invari-
desire for the mother. Viewing heterosexuality as oppressive, ably cut across the major sensitive areas of societal life such
lesbianism frees the woman from the inexorable strictures as race, politics, education, economy and religion. Purposive
of patriarchy. Politically speaking, Njeng contends that even sampling technique is used to do the selection. Purposive
heterosexual women can and do resort to lesbian acts when sampling technique simply means the selection of specific
they are asphyxiated with patriarchy. elements for research investigations. According to Nworgu
The literature review gives vital insight into the pragmat- (2006), “in purposive sampling, specific elements, which
ics analysis of poetry and others that focus specifically on the satisfy some predetermined criteria, are selected.”
critical interpretation of Audre Lorde’s writings, especially
her poetry. The literature review shows that no research has
been carried out to pragmatically interpret and analyze Au- Instruments for Data Collection
dre Lorde’s poetry. This observation has provided a fresh The researcher makes use of documented poems of Audre
impetus for the researcher to continue the study so as to fill Lorde, especially those that concern race, politics, religion,
the existing lacuna. education and economy. Also used are some published and
unpublished materials on the activities of public and private
METHODOLOGY organizations. Library material are extensively explored for
detailed information on conversational implicature and its
In this work, pragmatics principles, specifically, Grice’s Co- application to text analysis. The researcher also makes use
operative Principle which include the four Maxims, have of internet for currency, modernization and global standard.
been applied to the study of Audre Lorde’s two selected po-
ems. The method involves the analysis of Lorde’s two po-
ems using Grice’s theory of Conversational Implicature to ANALYSIS
see how its maxims could be applied to a reading of meaning
“From the House of Yemanjά”
in the two poems.
In the poem, “From the House of Yemanjά,” Lorde tells the
story of a mother who has two faces, and two daughters,
Design of the Study one white, one black, and obviously the poet-speaker is the
The study is a pragmatics analysis of Audre Lorde’s po- black one, but the mother suppresses and silences her black-
ems. The design the researcher employs is analytic survey. ness. The mother is notorious for suppressing blackness
Analytic survey or what is known as cross- sectional study and upholding whiteness in such a way that whiteness is
Grice’s Conversational Implicature: A Pragmatics Analysis of Selected Poems of Audre Lorde 125

supposedly superior to blackness. The whiteness is upheld metaphysical reassertion of the divine law of God that things
as the norm and the mother wants her daughter to embrace that are created by God must co-exist.
that norm and forget about her blackness because blackness In the poem “From the House of Yemanjά,” we perceive
equals difference. The poet-speaker makes it perfectly clear the use of two metaphors___“my mother had two faces and a
that this is the United States where, of course, whiteness frying pot.” These metaphors convey the image of a mother
is normalized as identity and held up high for everybody wielding a frying pot. The frying pot here is not your or-
to emulate. So whiteness is what is held up in society for dinary frying pot but instead represents an instrument by
everybody to emulate and blackness is what nobody wants which the mother molds her daughters into the image of
to associate with because blackness is seen as synonymous white society. There is an implied comparison between her
with inferiority, even diabolism. This is what Audre Lorde daughters and their construction into the image of white
emphasizes in the sense that once you are black, everybody society. “A frying pot” is a metaphor of social construction
sees you as a “ghetto” person. The poet-speaker’s moth- which the speaker’s mother is using to construct her daugh-
er worships whiteness, but Lorde wants her to accept her ters into the image of white society. In a way, the frying pot
blackness and not cook her into what she does not want to is symbolic in that it represents the attempt by the mother to
be by trying to suppress her identity as a black person. The forge these young girls, her daughters, into something that
daughter makes it clear to her mother that a “super star” they are not. The statement “My mother had two faces” is
can come from a “ghetto,” that she should learn to appre- also a metaphor which speaks to the divided loyalties of the
ciate what she has. There is a fundamental dialectic/tension speaker’s mother___one geared towards whiteness which she
between whiteness that is affirmed and promoted and priv- acknowledges and privileges, the other prone to blackness
ileged for the daughter to emulate, on the one hand, and which she debases. The question then for the poet-speaker is
the blackness that the daughter has chosen deliberately for what choice does she make in the circumstances___ does she
herself instead, on the other. This is the main intellectual embrace whiteness and reject her blackness or does she em-
thrust of this poem__two warring ideals, according to W.E.B. brace her blackness and accept who she is? She accepts the
DuBois__whiteness and blackness, with the mother privileg- latter, and that acceptance is the source of tension between
ing whiteness better than blackness and the daughter on the her and her mother.
other hand, privileging blackness. In the second stanza, the poet-speaker expands on the
To fortify her argument in privileging her blackness, metaphor of two faces___ one dark and rich and authentic,
she falls back on the African mythological tradition of the the other white, false and adulterated___“pale as a witch.”
The poet-speaker makes her choice for the former which is
Orisha. Why does the poet-speaker fall back on the Orisha
dark, rich and authentic___her black identity. Having made
mythology? The reason is that Yemanjά is one of the female
her choice, the poet-speaker makes a declarative statement
deities of the Orisha. Orisha is the Yoruba deity pantheon
about that choice:
that encompasses a lot of gods and goddesses of which
Mother I need
Yemanjά is one of the prime goddesses. One of the charac-
Mother I need
teristics of Yemanjά which Audre Lorde admires is that she
Mother I need your blackness now
is self-assertive, bold and commands respect and adoration
As august earth needs rain,
even among the male deities. She is fearless and audacious.
Insisting on her black identity and rejecting the white im-
The speaker flies to Yemanjά’s patronage in order to emulate
age being thrust upon her or being rammed down her throat
black role models, black superstars. The speaker reminds us
by what Ikenna Dieke (Lectures, University of Nigeria,
of Jamaica Kincaid’s girl in “Girl” in her title novel From
Nsukka, 2012) has called ‘traditional whitocratic socializa-
the Bottom of the River. The girl’s predicament is similar to tion.’
the speaker’s in “From the House of Yemanjά.” In both the
poem and the story, the protagonists are in opposition with
their respective mothers. In both poem and story, both poet Grice’s maxim of quantity to audre lorde’s“ from the
and novelist interrogate the role of the mother in shaping house of yemanjά”
the daughter’s place in the culture and society. In the fourth By involving the natural indicators, “the sun and moon”
stanza, the speaker calls a spade a spade, and associating them with one of the daughters, the speaker
Mother I need seems to be reaching for a hyperbole. Hyperboles are exag-
Mother I need gerated language employed to heighten awareness or con-
Mother I need your blackness now sciousness. Grice claims that hyperboles can be analyzed in
As the august earth needs rain. terms of conversational implicatures. The element of exag-
She is hungry for her blackness which her mother is sup- geration underscores a profuseness which points to a propen-
pressing. She doesn’t want to grow into whiteness. In the sity to say too much beyond what is traditionally sufficient to
final stanza, the speaker talks about harmony of creation, make a point. For instance, in stanza one, the speaker could
insisting that the natural indicators, sun and moon, must perfectly have stopped with the line “ who was not me” but
co-exist. It is not a question of either this or that. The cos- because she is trying to underscore the difference between
mic law of God is that two dissimilar things must co-exist to her and her white sister, she expands her consciousness to
achieve harmony. God has created white people and black include the cosmic order. The reference to the cosmic order
people to co-exist and live in harmony. The last stanza is a is not necessary, but it is only an attempt to deepen the gulf
126 IJALEL 7(1):120-129

between the speaker and her other sister. In that respect, the daughter is referring to is her naturalness as a black woman,
speaker tends to say too much, more than enough to explain she could have quite easily said that without invoking the
the difference between her the black sister and her white sis- cosmic order, but by invoking the cosmic order to describe a
ter. Since the ground rule of Maxim of Quantity delimits the simple process of black beauty introduces an ambiguity and
quantity of information to be provided, it becomes perfectly a needless obscurity of expression. Therefore, that expres-
clear that the speaker ignores this limitation; in other words, sion with the sun and moon violates the maxim of manner.
the speaker violates this important maxim of the Cooperative
Principle.
“The Black Unicorn”
There are two senses in which to understand the meaning of
Maxim of quality a unicorn. A unicorn is an animal that does not really exist. In
The Maxim of Quality has two provisos: Do not say what another sense, a unicorn is a mythical creature resembling a
you believe to be false; do not say that for which you lack horse. Let us look at the meanings in terms of racial politics
adequate evidence. In the first stanza of “From the House in the United States. The first meaning has implication for
of Yemanjά,” there is clear evidence that the first proviso racial politics in the sense that historically the black person is
of the Maxim of Quality has been violated in the sense that equated to an animal and if the black person is equated to an
the speaker creates the impression that she desires the eyes animal, then it means that he does not share in the privileges
of her twin sister who is white: “I am the sun and moon and of humanity. This was what informed the ideology of the
forever hungry/for her eyes,” but in actuality, she resents Trans Atlantic Slave Trade. When you subject human beings
that. The lines in stanza four belie this impression created. to an animalistic treatment then you create the impression
The following lines in stanza four stand in opposition to the that fundamentally they are not humans but animals. The
impression that she desires her eyes, her twin sister’s eyes; assumption in the West is that black Africans are not really
Mother I need human and so must be subjected to inhuman treatment. But
mother I need if the black person were a human being, therefore, it would
mother I need your blackness now follow that they must treat him as such and so have no right
as the august earth needs rain. to oppress him, to denigrate him. In the second meaning, the
Additionally, in the last stanza, stanza five, there is a dia- black person is seen as a horse and as a horse must be sub-
lectic between whiteness and blackness in the sense that both jected to inhuman labour. Being a mythical figure suggests
entities maintain their distinct identities, and so can never that a black person exists in the white man’s imagination as
merge and become one. The speaker says: a myth.
I am By entitling her poem “The Black Unicorn” Audre
the sun and moon and forever hungry Lorde seems to be parodying the Western notion of the
the sharpened edge black person as something resembling an animal. Back to
where day and night shall meet the first meaning, the fact that a unicorn does not really exist
and not be speaks to the fundamental or perceived invisibility of the
one. black person in Western epistemology (the whole domain
This final pronouncement lays to rest the notion that of knowledge). Hence, Ralph Waldo Ellison, the African
black people can merge into white people and come out American novelist, speaks of that perceived invisibility and
looking the same. Instead, the speaker cherishes and cele- the consequences of it in his signature novel Invisible Man.
brates difference and abhors her mother’s tendency toward In the first three lines in the first stanza, Audre Lorde par-
sameness. The hyperboles in the preceding stanza violate the odies the comparison between black and unicorn. She sug-
maxim of Quality which says: Do not say what you believe gests that unlike unicorns that do not really exist for real,
to be false. The hyperbolic declaration in the same stanza Black people do exist for real. Black people are a reality.
could be linked to the fact that the alleged implicatures in They are real in flesh and blood. They are not shadows but
this poem are patent violations of the maxim of truthfulness. human beings created by God. They have emotions to be-
The story line in “From the House of Yemanjά,” is that of come offended and the intellect to understand that they have
a mother who is alienated from one of her daughters because been offended. The black unicorn is impatient because he
of her perceived attempt to turn her into what she is not. cannot wait to gain his freedom. This is because the black
In doing that, she introduces an ostensibly irrelevant meta- unicorn is mistaken to be a shadow that does not have emo-
phor___two natural indicators, the sun and the moon, and the tions or a symbol in the sense that black people are symbols
question the reader consistently asks is: what is the relevance of primitive tribe or primitivism from a primitive Africa,
of these two cosmic entities and the estranged daughter. The what Joseph Conrad calls in his novel “heart of darkness.”
reference to these cosmic indicators is repeated in the last The blacks have their needs. They are not unicorns. They
stanza, and there seems no sane justification for that. In ef- are impatient and protesting their captivity and demanding
fect, the reference to the cosmic metaphor of the sun and their freedom and equality. In a clear reference to Ameri-
moon suggests an irrelevancy that bears no logical relation- can slavery, Audre Lorde says that the Black Unicorn was
ship with the situation that the daughter is in. But even if we “taken through a cold country where mist painted mockeries
were to grant that there is a relevance, the metaphor seems of my fury.” Here, she talks about how black people were
far-fetched in its present configuration. Granted that what the forcibly taken from tropical Africa to temperate climate, the
Grice’s Conversational Implicature: A Pragmatics Analysis of Selected Poems of Audre Lorde 127

United States in particular through the so called Middle Pas- to man and we as great great grandchildren of the slaves
sage. One of the characteristic elements of Lorde’s writing know what happened to our people in the course of history,
is the presence of intense palpable anger, and in this poem, in the course of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.” The speaker
the inhuman treatment of black people in the United States seems to be saying also, “you can call us whatever name
provokes that intense anger in her. The anger vibrates within you choose to call us, the truth is that we are inheritors of a
the vocabulary she is using. The anger is steaming within great people___African people and we are here to call atten-
her almost uncontrollably. Her anger is first the enslavement tion to that___We also are here to reclaim what is rightfully
of black people, then their discrimination in various insti- ours.”
tutions in the United States, then the Jim Crow laws of the
South, etc. The black unicorn wants his freedom now and he Grice’s maxims to audre lorde’s “the black unicorn”
is restless and unrelenting.
The last line in stanza two___“the black unicorn is not Speaking pragmatically, in “The Black Unicorn,” Audre
free” undermines what Ikenna Dieke (2010) describes in Lorde violates the Maxim of Quality in the first seven lines
his book Allegory and Meaning as the familiar American of the poem’s first long stanza;
functional idealism enshrined in the preamble to the Amer- The black unicorn is greedy
ican Constitution which is: “All men are created equal/that The black unicorn is impatient
they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable The black unicorn was mistaken
rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit for a shadow
of Happiness.” It undermines it because Audre Lorde is or symbol
and taken
saying that despite what is enshrined in the preamble to
through a cold country.
the American Constitution, the reality on the ground is that
Based on what is evident in the preceding literary anal-
black people in the United States are not really free and
ysis, the black unicorn could not be greedy, impatient and
that is why the speaker and by extension black Americans
mistaken since the speaker has already told us that black
are unrelenting in their personal and collective resolve and
people are not only desirous of their freedom but that they
struggle to be free and achieve true equality with white
have a right to desire that freedom, to hunger and thirst for
people in a society built on solid equalitarian principles.
that freedom. So it seems quite unlikely that the speaker
The reason that the black is restless or restive is that he is
meant to say that the black is greedy, impatient and mistak-
still in captivity two hundred years after the Revolutionary
en. Knowing full well the chequered history of black people
War (the War of Independence). The speaker challenges
in the United States, the speaker’s intended meaning is that
the Western assumption that blacks are strange creatures
black people are justified in their demand for social justice.
or anything other than human beings while the unicorn is The last stanza of the poem,
perceived as a beast. But the speaker is adamant that black The black unicorn is restless
people are not beasts. Instead, they are human beings with the black unicorn is unrelenting
feelings and desires, and when their feelings are punctured, the black unicorn is not
they will be angry and their anger is justifiable. The only free.
parallel between the beast and the black is the one forced on Conveys the real communicative intention of the speak-
the latter by whites who through slavery have turned black er which she employs in the first stanza that depicts verbal
people into beasts of burden. The speaker insists that the irony. Her use of verbal irony in stanza one, therefore, vi-
black people should be respected and granted their rights olates the maxim of Quality, for according to Grice, verbal
and here and now. And because these rights have been tak- irony is a blatant violation of the maxim of Quality. The
en away from them, the speaker is infuriated. Unicorns are reason is that the speaker intends to convey only what is
supposed to be silent, being able to move without making conversationally implicated: the conversational implica-
any sound. The speaker insists that black people will never tures of the utterance, thus have to be seen as cancelling
be silenced as long as they have a soul in them. They must what is actually said. Her use of verbal irony indicates the
speak up against their curtailed freedom, against their cap- fact that an implicature has to be substituted for what was
tivity, against those that are responsible for and implicated literally said ought to confirm the hearer’s suspicion that
in that captivity. the maxim has been violated rather than preserving her as-
“The Black Unicorn” is a protest poem. A protest poem sumption that it has been obeyed. In other words, the im-
is a poem in which the speaker registers disapproval of the plicatures carried by irony do not seem to be at all of the
status quo. And that status quo is the oppression of black same as more standard implicatures; they do not satisfy the
people. In short, Audre Lorde in this poem is serving a no- same definition, and they must be worked out according
tice that African people will no longer keep silent in the to rather different principles. Verbal ironies in stanza one
face of their oppression and denial of their basic/fundamen- have as counterparts in the last stanza of the poem from
tal right. The speaker is saying something like this: “If you which they violate the maxim of Quality. But in the last
thought we would be silent, you had something coming for four lines of the second stanza, the speaker adheres to the
you.” “If you thought we would forget our history, about Maxim of Quality
what happened to our people, you had better think again.” The black unicorn is restless
“Our history is a history of brutality, of man’s inhumanity the black unicorn is unrelenting
128 IJALEL 7(1):120-129

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