EXAMPLES OF PRAGMATICS IN DISCOURSE

Grice’s cooperative principle is a set of norms that are expected in

conversations. It consists of four maxims, we have to follow in order to be
cooperative and understood:
• Maxim of quality : As speaker we have to tell the truth or something that is
provable by adequate evidence.
• Maxim of quanity: We have to be as informative as required, we should not
say more or less.
• Maxim of relation: Our response has to be relevant to the topic of
discussion.
• Maxim of manner: We have to avoid ambiguity or obscurity; we should be
direct and straightforward.
• Maxim of Quantity: A: I’ll call all my friends to come to my party next
weekend. B: Mark and Paula will be in town next weekend. A: Great, I’ll call
Paula. In this example, speaker A flouts the maxim of quantity because his
response attends only to part of the topic initiated by A. Consequently, the
deliberate omission can be said to imply that A is not going to invite Mark to
his party, and even more, that he probably does not like Mark and that is
why he does not want to invite him.
EXAMPLES
• A: You should hurry up a little in persuading them, because we ‘re all
in a hurry to do all that.
• B: Do you read the papers?
• In order to interpret B’s response, A has to infer that it is based on
conversational implicature. That is, B’s
• reply implies if you read the newspapers, you will know that I have done so
many times. Such aspect of meaning
• is pragmatic because it is not explicitly stated in the utterance but has to be
inferred depending on the context.
• There are thirty people in here. Could you open the window?
• The utterance above is possible to be delivered in a stuffy classroom via
someone near enough to someone else sitting by the window. Here, the
speaker’s principal goal is to get the window open whereas his subsidiary
goal is to supply a good justification for the request.
• Johnny: Hey Sally let’s play marbles
• Johnny’s Mother: How is your homework getting along Johnny?
• In this instance, Johnny’s mother violates the maxim of relevance in order to
convey an additional meaning. She reminds her son that he may not yet be
free to play marbles.
• Three blind mice, three blind mice.
• See how they run! See how they run!
• What distinguishes this specific type of cohesion is that the
information to be recovered consists of the referential meaning, the
identity of the particular thing that is being referred to. Hence, in the
example above, they refers to three blind mice.
• “I've already worked with Angelina Jolie in a movie and I saw firsthand
what she faces. Brad Pitt and Angelina together are pure dynamite.”
• Possible interpretation of this utterance can be that, “Angelina Jolie and
Brad Pitt fight too much (in an explosive way)” or “The couple has a
bombastic sexual relationship”, among other possible interpretations.
 REFERENCES

Proença, G. M. (2016). PRAGMATICS AND DISCOURSE ANALYSIS: A

DIALOGUE ON THE CONCEPT OF APHORIZATION IN MEDIA TEXTS1.
benjamins. https://
benjamins.com/catalog/prag.26.1.05lar/fulltext/prag.26.1.05lar.pdf