The Principle of

Cooperation

Conversational Implicature
Conversational Maxims
Flouting the Maxims
 Conversational Implicature

If people can mean different things with different
words, how do human beings interpret the
difference between what is said and what is
meant?

Why do people not speak directly and say what
they mean?

Paul Grice wonders: How is it possible to say
something and mean something else? Which is
the mechanism which enriches the original
meaning?

Grice (1967) outlined the theory of
implicature (first published in Logic and
Conversation) – one of the most influential
theories in the development of pragmatics

It is an attempt at explaining how a hearer
gets from what is said to what is meant,
from the level of expressed meaning to the
level of implied meaning
 Implicature vs. inference

The verb to imply is used when the speaker
generates some meaning beyond the semantic
meaning of the words.

Implicature (Grice’s term) refers to the implied
meaning generated intentionally by the
speaker

The verb to infer refers to the situation in which
the hearer deduces meaning from available
evidence

Inference is the inferred meaning deduced by
the hearer, which may or may not be the same as
the speaker’s intended implicature.
Example 1 (source: Thomas 1995: 59):

Some years ago, Jenny Thomas went to stay with
her brother and his family, including his son,
aged 5. She had had with her an electric
toothbrush, into which she had recently put new
batteries. Her brother asked to see the
toothbrush, but when he tried to operate it, it
would not work:
J.T.: That’s funny. I thought I had put in some
new batteries.
Nephew (going extremely red): The ones in my
engine still work.

J. T’s remark had been a genuine expression of
surprised irritation, addressed to the family at
large and she did not expect any response.

However, her nephew misinterpreted the force of

her utterance as an accusation and inferred
(wrongly) that he was a suspect.

How can one interpret correctly the nephew’s

inferred meaning?

Step 1: to assign sense and reference to the
words. The boy was asserting that he had
batteries in the engine of his toy train which were
in working order.

Step 2: the hearer works out the speaker’s
intention in uttering those words; they understood
him to have implied that he was not responsible
for the fact that the batteries were flat. The
illocutionary force of his utterance: deny guilt.

Step 3: everyone present inferred from the
evidence (from their knowledge of how little
boys behave, from the fact that he blushed, from
the attempt to deflect attention from his toy, and
from the fact that he spoke at all) that he had in
fact switched the batteries.

Grice’s theory is designed to explain how hearers
get from level 1 to level 2, from what is said to
what is implied.

Steps 1 and 2 fall within the realm of pragmatics;

Step 3 depends on more than just linguistic
factors and needs to be explained within a more
general theory, that of social interaction.
 Conversational Implicature

The basic assumption in conversation (according to
Grice 1975), unless otherwise indicated, is that the
participants are adhering to some shared rules of
conversation, which he calls the Cooperative Principle
Example 2
A: I hope you brought the bread and the cheese.
B: Ah, I brought the bread.
Interpretation:
- In order for A to understand B’s reply, A has to assume
that B is co-operating, and has given B the right amount
of information.
- But he did not mention the cheese. If he had brought the
cheese, he would have said so.
- He must intend that A should infer that what is not
mentioned was not brought. In this case B has conveyed
more than he said via a conversational implicature.
 The Cooperative Principle

consider the following scenario (Yule 1996: 36)
(example 3)

There is a woman sitting on a park bench and a

large dog lying on the ground in front of the
bench. A man comes along and sits down on the
bench.
Man: Does your dog bite?
Woman: No.
(The man reaches down to pet the dog. The dog
bites the man’s hand.)
Man: Ouch! You said your dog doesn’t bite.
Woman: He doesn’t. But that’s not my dog.
- problem: the man’s assumption that more was
communicated than was said
- the man assumed that the woman, by saying NO,
meant that the dog lying at her feet was her dog,
and it did not bite
- The general idea: in a conversation, interlocutors
cooperate with each other – the principle of
cooperation
 The Cooperative Principle
Grice: ‘Make your contribution such as is
required, at the stage at which it occurs,
by the accepted purpose or direction of
the talk exchange in which you are
engaged.’

It means: speak appropriately according to
the conversation you are in.
 Conversational Maxims

If one adopts the conversational principle, one
also adopts (observes, obeys) the Conversational
Maxims (conversation should satisfy the maxims)

we interpret language on the assumption
that its sender is obeying four maxims:
- Maxim of quantity – amount of information
- Maxim of quality – truth
- Maxim of relation – relevance
- Maxim of manner – non-ambiguity
1. Maxim of quantity: Make your contribution as
informative as is required for the current purpose
of the exchange. Do not make your contribution
more informative than is required.
2. Maxim of quality: Do not say what you believe
to be false; Do not say that for which you lack
evidence.
3. Maxim of Relation: Be relevant
4. Maxim of Manner: Avoid obscurity of
expression; Avoid ambiguity; Be brief; Be
orderly.

The maxims are unstated assumptions we
have in conversations:

we assume that people normally:
– are going to provide an appropriate amount of
information;
– are going to tell the truth;
– are being relevant
– are trying to be as clear as they can
However, there are certain expressions used to
mark that speakers may be in danger of not
fully adhering to the principles. These
expressions are called ‘hedges’
 Hedges (Yule 1996)
Quality:

As far as I know, they’re married.

I may be mistaken, but I thought I saw a
wedding ring on her finger.

I’m not sure if this is right, but I heard it was a
secret ceremony in Hawaii.

He couldn’t live without her, I guess.
Quantity:

As you probably know, I am afraid of dogs.

So, to cut a long story short, we grabbed our
stuff and ran.

I won’t bore you with all the details, but it was
an exciting trip.
 Hedges
Relation:

I don’t know if this is important, but some of the
files are missing.

This may sound like a dumb question, but whose
handwriting is this?

Not to change the subject, but is this related to
the budget?
Manner:

This may be a bit confused, but I remember
being in a car.

I’m not sure if this makes sense, but the car had
no lights.

I don’t know if this is clear at all, but I think the
other car was reversing.

There are cases in which not all four maxims can be
observed.
– Brevity and truth often pull in opposite directions (a
short answer is often simplified to the point of
distortion).
* example 4: On the tube: ‘How are you?’ ’Fine,
thanks.’
- if answer takes more than this, one can conclude that
sthg. very serious has happened (more is
communicated than said)
* example 5: She is a fish. - metaphoric meaning
– Legal discourse and scientific discourse often sacrifice
the maxim of quantity to the maxim of quality.
– Maxims of quantity and manner are often at odds. To
be clear one sometimes needs to be long-winded.
 FLOUTING THE MAXIMS
(GENERATING IMPLICATURE)
The situations which chiefly interested Grice were those in
which a speaker blatantly, deliberately, fails to observe
a maxim, not with any intention of deceiving or
misleading, but because the speaker wants to prompt the
hearer to look for a meaning which is different from the
expressed meaning.

These are intended violations of the maxims; the sender

intends the receiver to perceive them as such. If the
sender does not intend violations to be perceived as such,
or if the receiver does not realize that they are deliberate,
then communication degenerates into lying, or simply
breaks down.
 FLOUTING THE MAXIMS

Grice: it is possible to violate these maxims – as
a result: derive more meaning

BUT! This violation should be obvious to the
interlocutor

Flouting a maxim = disregard it blatantly
1. A speaker flouts a maxim
2. Interlocutor believes speaker to be relevant and
observes the Cooperative Principle
3. Hearer searches for a ‘relevant’ interpretation
How? on the basis of
- the literal meaning of the utterance
- mutual contextual beliefs (MCB)
- the cooperative principle (CP)

This pattern of inference is the inference
by conversational implicature

Conversational implicature (C.I.) is a
surplus of meaning that the hearer
derives from the utterance over and
above the literal meaning, on the
assumption that the speaker observes
the cooperative principle, using the
literal meaning and the contextual
information
 1. Flouting the maxim of quality

when the speaker says something which is
blatantly untrue

Example 6:
Late on Christmas Eve an ambulance is sent to
pick up a man who has collapsed in Newcastle
city centre. The man is drunk and vomits all over
the ambulanceman who goes to help him. The
ambulanceman says:
‘Great, that’s really great! That’s made my
Christmas!’

an implicature is generated by the speaker’s
saying something which is patently (obviously)
false

Grice: the possible deductive process is this:

i) The ambulanceman has expressed pleasure at having someone
vomit over him.

ii) There is no example in recorded history of people being delighted
at having someone vomit over them.

iii) I have no reason to believe that the ambulanceman is trying to
deceive us in any way.

iv) Unless the ambulanceman’s utterance is entirely pointless, he
must be trying to put across some other proposition.

v) This must be some obviously related proposition.

vi) The most obviously related proposition is the exact opposite of
the one he has expressed.

vii) The ambulanceman is extremely annoyed at having the drunk
vomit over him.
 2. Flouting the maxim of quantity

when a speaker blatantly gives more or less
information than the situation requires

See example 3 of the woman with the dog lying
at her feet

Example 7
A: How are we getting to the party?
B: Well, we’re getting there in Dave’s car.
Interpretation: B blatantly gives less information than A
needs, thereby generating the implicature that, while she
and her friends have made arrangements, A will not be
travelling with them
3. Flouting the maxim of relation

making a response which is very obviously
irrelevant to the topic at hand
Example 8
A: Would you like a pizza?
B: Ask a child if he would like a pie.
- apparently, B flouts the maxim of relation by
providing neither a ‘yes’ nor a ‘no’ answer. The
implicated reply: ’Obviously, yes.’ The
additional meaning: because the answer is so
obvious, the question should not have been asked
in the first place
4. Flouting the maxim of manner
Example 9
This interaction occurred during a radio interview with
an un-named official from United States Embassy in
Port-au-Prince Haiti:
Interviewer: Did the United States Government play
any part in Duvalier’s departure? Did they, for
example, actively encourage him to leave?
Official: I would not try to steer you away from that
conclusion.
Interpretation: The official could simply have replied ‘Yes’.
The actual response is extremely long-winded. It is
obviously no accident that the official has failed to
observe the maxim of manner. There is no reason to
believe that the official is being deliberately unhelpful
(She could have simply refused to answer at all, or said:
‘No comment’).
Other cases of non-observance
of the maxims
A) Flouting the co-operative principle in order to
make a point more forcefully also explains:
– Metaphors: ‘Queen Victoria was made of iron’
– Hyperbole: ‘I’ve got millions of beers in my cellar’
– Irony and sarcasm: ‘I love it when you sing out of key
all the time’
– Humour (e.g. puns = play upon words; e.g. Two
peanuts were walking in a tough neighborhood and
one of them was a-salted. - instead of: assaulted)
B) Opting out (refusing to answer)
Example 10
Bill Clinton’s response to a journalist who was asking
him about the Whitewater affair, a scandal in which
Bill and Hillary were involved. When the journalist
asked the question, Clinton took his microphone off,
got out of his seat, told the journalist he’d had his
two questions and went off.
Example 11
The Conservative M.P., Teddy Taylor, had been asked a
question about talks he had had with Colonel
Gadaffi:
“Well, honestly, I can’t tell you a thing, because what
was said to me was told me in confidence.”
C) Suspending a maxims
There are occasions/situations/cultures when
it appears that there is no expectation that
all the maxims will be observed.
Compare - an interrogation (we would not
expect that the maxim of Relation should
be observed by the defendants)
- a confessional (we expect the
opposite)
D) Infringing (megszegés):

A speaker who fails to observe a maxim (with no
intention of generating an implicature and with
no intention of deceiving) is said to ‘infringe’ the
maxim.

The non-observance stems from imperfect
linguistic performance, e.g. speaker has an
imperfect command of the language (young
child, foreign learner) or speaker’s performance
is impaired in some way (nervousness,
drunkenness, excitement)
E) Violation of a maxim
- Grice (1975) defines violation as the
unostentatious (nem tüntetőleges) non-observance of a
maxim
- if a speaker violates a maxim, s/he ‘will be liable
to mislead’ (1975: 49)
Example 12:
An English athlete, Dianne Modahl, the
Commonwealth Games 800 metres champion, pulled
out of her opening race and returned to England.
Caroline Searle, press office for the England team,
said:
“She has a family bereavement; her grandmother has
died.”
The next day it was announced that Ms Modahl had
been sent home following a positive drug test.

What Ms Searle had said was true, but the
implicature (that the reason for Modahl’s
returning home was a bereavement) was
false

Pragmatically misleading utterances:
regularly encountered in certain activity
types: trials, parliamentary speeches,
arguments (here: violation of the maxims
seems to be the norm)
 Criticism of Grice’s theory

It can be difficult to distinguish between different
categories of non-observance;

Sometimes it can be difficult to determine which
maxim is being invoked, since maxims seem to
overlap sometimes;

Sometimes an utterance has a whole range of
possible interpretations. How do we know which
implications are intended?

Grice’s four maxims are not all of the same
order, they seem to be rather different in nature.
 Bibliography

Cook, Guy (1989) Discourse. OUP

Grice, Paul (1975) Logic and
Conversation. In: Cole, P. Morgan J.L.
(eds.) Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech acts,
41-58. New York: Academic.

Thomas, Jenny (1995) Meaning in
Interaction: an Introduction to Pragmatics.
London & New York: Longman.
Task 1
Which maxims are flouted in the following ex.?

I think I’ll go for a W-A-L-K (spelling the

word letter by letter in front of a dog)

[At a dinner party]: Is there anywhere I can
powder my nose?

This meal is delicious (said by a guest who
finds the food disgusting)

Child: I’m going to watch Match of the Day
now.
Parent: What was that Maths homework you
said you had?

(Source: Cook 1989)

Task 2
Which are the maxims flouted and the implicatures
generated in the following examples?

[A is working at a computer in one of the
department’s lab when she experiences a
problem]
A: Can you help me?
B: Graeme’s office hours start in five minutes.

[Jonathan, sensitive about his lack of progress in

Italian, has just returned from an Italian evening
class]
Elena: What did you do?
Jonathan: This and that.

[Victor has been buried up to his neck in the back
garden by an irate builder. His wife, Margaret,
comes out]
M: What are you doing?
V: I’m wallpapering the spare bedroom, what
the hell do you think I’m doing?
(One Foot in the Grave, BBC 12/11/96)

[This is part of the queen’s speech at the
anniversary of her 40th year on the throne. It had
been a bad year for the queen - marital
difficulties of her children, the Windsor Palace
had gone up in flames.]
Queen: 1992 is not a year which I shall look back
with undiluted pleasure.
Task 3
Discuss the following exchanges in terms of the CP and implicatures.

The speaker is Rupert Allason (author, M.P. and expert
on the British intelligence services). He is discussing the
identity of the so-called ‘Fifth Man’:
‘It was either Graham Mitchell or Roger Hollis and I
don’t think it was Roger Hollis.’ (Thomas, 1995: 65)

B was on a long journey and wanted to read her book. A
was a fellow passenger who wanted to talk to her:
A: What do you do?
B: I’m a teacher.
A: Where do you teach?
B: Outer Mongolia.
A: Sorry I asked. (Thomas 1995: 68)