• Except lying, people flout a maxim to observe it in a further degree. Conversational implicature can only be induced in accordance to CP.
• Maxim of Quality: Try to make your contribution one that true:
– Do not say what you believe to be false. – Do not say something if you lack adequate
• but the imperatives in the CP are descriptive rather than prescriptive.
Violation of the maxims
• However, CP, like unwritten laws, is regulative and can be violated.
conversation, in which implicated messages are frequently involved.
• In daily conversations people do not usually say things but tend to imply them. The word “implicature” is used to refer to the extra meaning that is not explicitly expressed in the utterance. In making a conversation, the participants must first of all be willing to cooperate; otherwise, it would not be possible for them to carry on the talk. This general principle is called the 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.”
pragmatics
-----language in use
topics
• Cooperative principle (CP) • Neo-Gricean theories • Post-Gricean developments
Cooperative principle (CP)
• CP • Violation of the maxims • Summary of conversational implicature
evidence
Four maxims of CP
• Maxim of Relation: Make your contribution relevant • Maxim of Manner: Be perspicuous, and specifically.
-Avoid obscurity of expression
-Avoid ambiguity -Be brief -Be orderly
• CP is meant to describe what actually happens in conversation. People tend to be cooperative and say things which are true, relevant, as well as informative enough, and in a clear manner.
Four maxims of CP
• Maxim of Quantity:
– Make your contribution as informative as required (for the current purposes of the exchange).
– Do not make your contribution more informative than required.
CP
• Oxford Philosopher and logician Herbert illiam James, lectures at Harvard • 1975, logic and conversation • He attempt to explain the course of natural
• There are four maxims under this general principle: the maxim of quantity, quality, relation and manner.
• While conversation participants nearly always observe the CP, but they do not always observe these maxims. These maxims can be violated for various reasons, but when they are “flouted”, to use Grice’s term, does “conversational implicature” occur. Flouting a maxim means violating it blatantly, i.e., both the speaker and the hearer are aware of the violation. When a speaker flouts a maxim, his language becomes indirect.