Grices Maxims of Conversation Cooperative principle Make your conversational 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. Agreement among speakers that we will follow certain rules to make the conversation work and use conventions when formulating and interpreting utterances Implicature An utterance can imply a proposition that is not part of the utterance. i.e. an implied statement Flouting maxims-intentional violation to raise an implicature Speaker A: Uncle Bob is coming for dinner. Speaker B: Better lock up the liquor. Speaker B raises an implicature (implies) Speaker A makes an implicature (infers)

Criticisms of the Maxims Its not clear whether the maxims work in other languages and cultures. Some key concepts are undefined. A lot of intuition must be used to figure out, for example, when a speaker is being irrelevant. Theyre not a complete listing of the rules we follow in conversation; for example, there are also rules about, say, politeness, which are not addressed. There is some overlap, so its not always clear-cut which maxim is being violated. For example, take a dialogue like this: JOHN: Are you done yet? MEREDITH: Well, lets see, Ive had to deal with seven near-catastrophic systems failures in the last four hours, Elizabeth dragged me to four different useless meetings, and someone replaced my regular coffee with decaf, so Im only just getting caffeine in my system and I still have to track down whoever did it and slowly eviscerate them, which is a little higher on my to-do list at the moment than fixing your stupid computer, so no, no, Im not done yet, actually. JOHN: Jeez, a simple no would have sufficed.

Maxim of quantity All and only the necessary information for the H to understand Kenny and Tom are college roommates. Kenny walks into their living room and sees Tom reading a book. K. What are you reading? T. A book. Maxim of relevance/relation S. will be relevant utterances will relate to one another Mother: What time did you get home last night? Daughter: Well, the paper had already come.

Maxim of manner Avoid obscurity ambiguity, be brief, orderly Chronology, spatial, cause>effect, general>specific Parents and two young children are in the kitchen. Husband: What are you doing? Wife: I am contemplating the methods for successfully convincing our offspring to perform their daily ablutions. Husband: Good luck with that. John told the teacher to piss off. John failed the course. John failed the course. John told the teacher to piss off.

Maxim of quality S will not say what he believes to be false or that he or she doesnt have evidence for

In an undergraduate geography class Student: Reno is the capital of Nevada. Teacher: Yeah, and London is the capital of BC Is Roy coming for lunch? He had a meeting at 11:30.

Practice: Determine which maxim is being flouted and what implicature is being raised.

How was your trip? Dont ask.

Is Suzanne at home? Her car is in the driveway.

Jacob said he could finish a marathon in under 3 hours. And pigs can fly.

Do you want another helping? I am sufficiently suffoncified that any more would be a copious redundancy.

Where did the candies go? Charlotte looks guilty.