Conversation makes sense to us because they follow certain principles. this is also true with written texts. Grice has outlined the principles in his Cooperative Principles (CP), that means to have conversation as ‘cooperative venture’. Cooperative venture is to get an effective, efficient conversation. So the CP is a mean to make conversation as is effective and efficient one. There are four maxims in the Cooperative Princples.
1. Be relevant (Maxims of relevance)
Make your contribution relevant to the interaction.
Indicate any way that it is not
Examples:
(a) Pass the salt.
Implicate: Pass the salt now.
(b): A: How are you doing in school?
B: Not too well, actually. I'm failing two of my classes.
vs. B: What fine weather we're having lately!
2. Be informative (Maxim of quantity)
Make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purposes of the exchange.
Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.
Examples: (a) A: Where is the post office?
B: Down the road, about 50 metres past the second left.
vs. B: Not far.
(b) A: How did Harry face in court the other day?
B: Oh, he got fine.
B’s contribution is what required from A’s utterance. However, still B will be condemned asa being a wrong informer, if then, for example, Harry gets life sentence.
3. Be truthful (Maxim of quality).
Or say things believed to be true and don’t say ones believed to be false.
Examples: (a) John has two PhDs.
Implicates: that I know that John has, and have adequate evidence that he has.
A: Should I buy my son this new sports car?
B: I don't know if that's such a good idea. He's totaled two cars since he got his license last year.
vs. B: No, he seems like he'd be a bad driver.
4. Be clear (Maxim of manner)
Avoid unnecessary prolixity
Avoid ambiguity.
Be brief.
Be orderly.
Examples: A: Where was Alfred yesterday?
B: He went to the store and bought some whiskey.
B is being perspicuous to A. He gives clear response to A.
A: What did you think of that movie?
B: I liked the creative storyline. The ending was really a surprise!
vs. B: It was interestingly done, sir.
Paul Grice admitted that the CP and Maxims of conversation could be applied not only in talk exchange, but also in sphere of transaction.[] He discovered that many people act according to these principles because they were taught to act in such a way and they did not lost this habit.
He tried to find a basis for such behavior and found out that ‘standard type of conversational practice not merely as something that all or most do in fact follow but as something that it is reasonable for us to follow, that we should not abandon.’[8]
Talk exchanges have certain features that jointly distinguish cooperative transactions:
1. The participants have some common immediate aim, even though their ultimate aims may be independent and even in conflict. In characteristic talk exchange, there is a common aim even if, as in an over-the-wall chat, it is a second –order one, namely,that each partly should, for the time being, identify himself with the transitory conversational interests of the other.
2. The contributions of the participants should be dovetailed, mutually dependent.
3. There is some sort of understanding (which may be explicit but which is often tacit) that, other things being equal, the transaction should continue in appropriate style unless both parties are agreeable that it should terminate. [7]
In spite of that no one ever follows to all the maxims far all time, we might even do not need to, because as we can see, we may rely on implicature, to get the point of our addresser’s idea.
2.2 Flouting the cooperative principle
In the previous part, it was admitted that CP and maxims of conversation help the speaker and the hearer to understand each other.
Without cooperation, human interaction would be far more difficult and counterproductive. Therefore, the Cooperative Principle and the Gricean Maxims are not specific to conversation but to interaction as a whole. For example, it would not make sense to reply to a question about the weather with an answer about groceries because it would violate the Maxim of Relation. Likewise, responding to a request for some milk with an entire gallon instead of a glass would violate the Maxim of Quantity.
However, it is possible to flout a maxim intentionally or unconsciously and thereby convey a different meaning than what is literally spoken. Many times in conversation, this flouting is manipulated by a speaker to produce a negative pragmatic effect, as with sarcasm or irony. The Gricean Maxims are therefore often purposefully flouted by comedians and writers, who may hide the complete truth and manipulate their words for the effect of the story and the sake of the reader’s experience.
Speakers who deliberately flout the maxims usually intend for their listener to understand their underlying implication. Therefore, cooperation is still taking place, but no longer on the literal level. Conversationalists can assume that when speakers intentionally flout a maxim, they still do so with the aim of expressing some thought. Thus, the Gricean Maxims serve a purpose both when they are followed and when they are flouted.
There are several ways/reasons a speaker might break one of the rules:
1. Violating the Cooperative Principle. One instance in which a speaker might break the maxim of quality is if they are really trying to deceive the listener; but this would also be a violation of the cooperative principle.
2. Signaling a violation (minor violation). A person might essentially come out and tell you they are violating a maxim and why.
Examples.
“I don’t know if this is relevant, but...” (relation)
“I’m not sure how to say this, but...” (manner)
“I can’t tell you; I’m sworn to secrecy.” (quantity)
“This is just the word on the street; I can’t vouch for this information.” (quality)
3. Maxim clash. A speaker might violate one maxim in order to preserve another.
Example.
Carson is driving John to Meredith’s house.
CARSON: Where does Meredith live?
JOHN: Nevada.
Maxim violated: Quantity.
Why: There is clash between quantity and quality. Carson is looking for a street address, but John gives a weaker, less informative statement (hence the quantity violation). If John really doesn’t know anything more specific, however, he cannot give a more informative statement without violating quality.[18]
4. “Flouting” a maxim (major violation) to create a conversational implicature. By clearly and obviously violating a maxim, you can imply something beyond what you say.
Speakers should give enough information as necessary in order to understand the current conversation, but not provide more information than expected. This is known as the maxim of quantity, giving just the right amount of details so that the conversation flows smoothly.
Ia. A flouting of the first maxim of Quantity:
Examples:
1. Professor P. writes a letter of recommendation for Lucy when she applies for a programming job. The letter states, "Lucy is neat and well-dressed, comes to class on time, and has nice handwriting."
The letter is a blatant violation of several of the maxims, notably Quantity (insufficient information is given about Lucy's ability to program) and Relevance (irrelevant information is given).
But if the recipient of the letter assumes that Prof. P. is being cooperative overall, the recipient will conclude that the lack of information about Lucy's job skills is a way of communicating that they are insufficient, without explicitly saying so [8]
2. A: What should I do to get rid of this headache, Doctor?
B: Take some medicine.
Implication: B has not provided enough information – B did not say what medicine to take.
3. A: Where does C live?
B: Somewhere in the South of France.
Implication: B has not provided enough information – B did not say the exact address.
Extreme examples of a flouting of the first maxim of Quantity are provided by utterences of patent tautologies like Women are women and War is war.[7] They are totally noninformative according to the first maxim of Quantity and cannot be infringe it in any conversational context. But they are informative at the level of what implicated, and the hearer’s identification of their informative content at this level is dependent on his ability to explain the speaker’s selection ofthis particular patent tautology.
Ib. A flouting of the second maxim of Quantity.
4. A: Where’s Meredith?
B: The control room or the science lab.
Implication: B doesn’t know which of the two places Meredith is.
5. A: Excuse me–how much is this screwdriver?
B: $9.95. The saw is $39.50, and the power drill there on the table is $89.00.
Implication: B provides unnecessary additional information (marketers and salespeople often violate this rule in order to increase sales).
II. Examples in which the first maxim of quality is flouted.
1. Irony:
a) A is a good friend!
Implication: A betrays the speaker, and audience knows it.
b) Don’t be silly. I love working 80 hours a week with no vacation.
A: A lot of people are depending on you.
B: Thanks, that really takes the pressure off.
Implication: By saying something clearly untrue, B is implying that the opposite is true (sarcasm). The true meaning being expressed here is probably more like “That really puts a lot of pressure on me” and perhaps, by extension, “Stop pressuring me.”
2. Metaphor:
a) You are the cream in my coffee
Implication: The speaker is attributing to his audience some feature or features in respectof which the audience resembles the mentioned substance.
It is possible to combine metaphor and irony by imposing on the hearer two stages og interpretation.
You are the cream in my coffee – can be interpreted as ‘You are my pride and joy’, or, as irony interpretant, ‘You are my bane.’
3. Meiosis
Grice has such an example of meiosis, resulting from flouting the maxim of quality:
‘He was a little intoxicated’
Implication: This man is known to have broken up all the furniture.
4. Hyperbole. Usually in metaphor the second maxim of Quality is flouted.
Example: Everybody likes ice-cream.
Implication: it is clear, that there are people, who don’t like ice-cream.
It is not easy to find examples in which the second maxim of Quality is flouted, because they are rather contextual. They could be added by gestures, intonation to make the hearer sure that the speaker has a reasonable basis for such sayings.
Example; She’s probably deceiving her husband this evening.
Implication: the speaker posses some evidence of her love affair.
III. Examples of violation of the maxim of Relation.
Perhaps the most important rule is that your utterances must be relevant to the current topic at hand; this is known as the maxim of relevance. Going off-topic constantly will provoke displeasure with your fellow participants.[7]
A: How's the weather today?
B: There's a nice film opening at the theater tonight.
Implication: the answer does not correlate with the question.
Violation of this rule is quite useful in order to force a subject change:
A: Do you really love me?
B: I like Ferris wheels, and college football, and things that go real fast.
Implication: Either B doesn’t want to respond to A (perhaps he has problems discussing his feelings) or the answer is “no.”
C: Are you ever going to pay back the money I lent you?
D: It's very hot outside, isn't it?
Implication: D is not ready to pay back money.
Michael wants Pat to pass the salt. He says, "Could you pass the salt?"
In most cases, this question is not meant literally -- it is pretty clear that Pat is able to pass the salt. Therefore, the question violates some maxims, notably Relevance.
This violation of a maxim helps indicate to Pat that a non-literal use of the sentence is intended (most likely, an indirect request).[4]
IV. Examples in which maxims of Manner are flouted.
1. Ambiguity.
When the speaker answers with ambiguity, the hearer should define if this ambiguity was deliberate or accidental and react in proper way if it is a conversational game.
According to Grice, there can be two types of deliberate ambiguity:
a) examples in which there is no difference, or no striking difference, between two interpretations of an utterance with respect to straightforwardness; neither interpretation is notably more sophisticated, less standard. [7]
- I sought to tell my love, love that never told can be.
Implication: My love refers either to the emotions or an object of emotion, but as these notions are contextual synonyms, the flouting of maxim is acceptable.
b) Examples in which one interpretation is notably less straightforward than another.
2. Obscurity.
Sometimes the obscurity could be used in order to make the conversation unclear to the third party of conversation.[7]
A: Shall we get something for the kids?
B: Ok. But I veto I-C-E-C-R-E-A-M.
Implication: By spelling the word ‘ice-cream’ B wants to make the conversation unclear for children.
3. Failure to be brief or orderly.
Examples:
Miss B sang ‘Home sweet home’ vs. Miss B produced a series of sounds that corresponded closely with the score of ‘Home sweet home.’
A: When are you coming home?
B: I will codify that question to my superiors and respond at such a time as an adequate answer is preparable.
Implication: B is using unnecessarily complicated and confusing words and construction, because
B does not know or does not wish to give an answer to the question.
It is important to remember, that in English, speakers are accustomed to hearing events in chronological order (in some other languages, word order isn't as important.) This is why "We got married and had a baby", and "We had a baby and got married" have different meanings altogether.
Speakers sometimes deliberately violate the rules of ordinary conversation to achieve certain ends
Example:
1. A: Would you like to go out with Andrea?
B: Is the Pope Catholic?
Violated maxim: Relevance
Motivation: B is being humorous. By replying with a question whose answer is obvious, he is implying that the answer to A’s question is equally obvious: Yes!
2. A: I’ll pay you back in full next week, I promise.
B: Sure, and pigs will fly and fish will sing.
Violated maxim: Relevance
Motivation: B’s response implies sarcastically that he does not believe A.
3. A: What are the three most important things in real estate?
B: Location, location, and location.
Violated maxim: Quantity
Motivation: To emphasize the overwhelming importance of location
4. A: So tell me, do you like what I did to my hair?
B: Er…what’s on TV tonight?
Violated maxim: Relevance
Motivation: B does not like A’s hairstyle, so he changed the subject.
5. A: How can I develop a great body like yours?
B: Choose your parents carefully.
Violated maxim: Quality
Motivation: Indirectly saying that it is impossible, because it’s all in the genes.[4]
General conclusion
The aim of our work was to describe the rules of conversation according to Paul Grice’s philosophy and demonstrate their practical application.
At the first part we mentioned that Paul Grice was rather a philosopher than a linguist, that’s why we made the argument for the necessity of reading Grice’s work ‘Logic and conversation’ in the philosophical context, rather than in isolation. Then, a consideration of this context showed a number of themes which recurred: logic, conventional/non-conventional and, most importantly, rationality.
Grice’s interests were in the system of language; that it is an example of human rational action, and thus can be accounted for through some variety of logic (although, not traditional formal logic, perhaps). His aim was to find the logic of conversation which could account for the gap between saying and meaning, saying and implicating, conventional and non-conventional meaning. The logic that he sought was seen as a manifestation of rational action.
Grice’s articles (1957, 1967) have a profound influence on speech act theory. Grice proformulated the idea that ordinary communication takes place not directly by means of convention, but in virtue of a speaker’s evincing certain intentions and getting his or her audience to recognize those intentions (and to recognize that it was the speaker’s intention to secure the recognition). In his view, the utterance is not itself communicative, but only provides clues to the intentions of the speaker. A later part of Grice’s program spelled out how various maxims of cooperative behavior are exploited by speaker’s intentions in uttering certain words under particular circumstances.
Grice distinguished between what is said in making an utterance, that which determines the truth value of the contribution, and the total of what is communicated. Things that are communicated beyond what is said (in the technical sense) Grice called implicatures, and those implicatures are depend upon the assumption that the speaker is being cooperative he called conversational implicatures.
In our work we defined that Cooperative principles is a set of maxims of conversation and usually people follow them in order to make the communication clear. However, it is possible to flout a maxim intentionally or unconsciously and thereby convey a different meaning than what is literally spoken. Therefore, cooperation is still taking place, but no longer on the literal level. Conversationalists can assume that when speakers intentionally flout a maxim, they still do so with the aim of expressing some thought. Thus, the Gricean Maxims serve a purpose both when they are followed and when they are flouted.
References:
1. Bach, Kent, "Conversational Impliciture." - Mind and Language -1994 - pp.124-162.
2. Bach, Kent, "The myth of conventional implicature." Linguistics and Philosophy. - 1999 - pp.262-283.
3. Bach, Kent, 2004, "Pragmatics and the Philosophy of Language." In Horn and Ward (eds.) – 2004 - pp. 463-87.
4. Blakemore, Diane. Understanding Utterances. Oxford: Blackwell. – 1992.
5. Carston, Robyn. "Implicature, explicature, and truth-conditional semantics." Reprinted in Kasher (ed.) 1998 - pp. 436-79.
6. Chapman, Siobhan. Paul Grice, philosopher and linguist. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.-2005
7. Grice, H. Paul, "Logic and conversation.", Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts, New York: Academic Press - 1975 - pp. 41-58.
8. Grice, H. Paul "Further notes on logic and conversation." In P. Cole (ed.) – 1967.
9. Grice, H. Paul "Utterer's Meaning and Intentions," Philosophical Review - 1969 - pp.147-177.
10. Grice, H. Paul "Presupposition and Conversational Implicature." In P. Cole (ed.), Radical Pragmatics, New York: Academic Press - 1981- pp. 183-97.
11. Horn, Laurence R. and Gregory Ward (eds.) The Hanbook of Pragmatics. Oxford: Blackwell. – 2004.
12. Kempson, Ruth M. "Grammar and Conversational Principles." In F. Newmeyer (ed.) Linguistics: The Cambridge Survey, Vol. II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press – 1988 - pp. 139-163.
13. Levinson, Stephen. Presumptive Meanings. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press/Bradford Books- 2000.
14. Neale, Stephen "Paul Grice and the Philosophy of Language," Linguistics and Philosophy - 1992 – pp.509-559.
15. Searle John "Indirect speech acts." ibid. Reprinted in Pragmatics: A Reader, ed. S. Davis, Oxford: Oxford University Press. -1991- pp. 265–277.
16. Thomason, R. Accommodation, meaning, and implicature: Interdisciplinary foundations for pragmatics. In Intentions in Communication, ed. P. R. Cohen, J. L. Morgan & M. Pollack, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press -1990 - pp. 325–63.
17. Van Kuppevelt, J. (1996) Inferring from topics: Scalar implicatures as topic dependent inferences. Linguistics and Philosophy – 1996 – pp. 393–443
18. Wilson, D., and Sperber, D. On Grice's theory of conversation. In Conversation and Discourse, ed. P. Werth, New York: St. Martins Press -1981- pp. 155–78.
Internet references:
1. www.appstate.edu/mcgowant/grice.htm
2. www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_principle
3. www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicature
4. www.kwary.net
5. www.ncs.ruhosting.nl/bart/talks/paris2010/lecture2.pdf
6. www.sfu.ca/jeffpell/Cogs300/GriceLogicConvers75.pdf
7. www.online.sfsu.edu/kbach/grice.htm
8. www.plato.stanford.edu/entries/grice/