The Cooperative Principle

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The Cooperative Principle

• The seventh week

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Key points

• The Cooperative Principle and its maxims
• Conversational implicatures

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Difficulties

• The violations of the cooperation maxims

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6.3.2.1 The Cooperative Principle and its maxims

• A principle proposed by the philosopher Paul
  Grice whereby those involved in communication
  assume that both parties will normally seek to
  cooperate with each other to establish agreed
  meaning. It is composed of four maxims quality,
  quantity, relation, and manner.

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The four cooperative maxims

• 1 The Maxim of Quality
• Try to make your contribution one that is true
• A. Do not say what you believe to be false.
• B. Do not say that for which you lack adequate
  evidence (Say what you believe to be true)

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The four cooperative principles

• 2 The Maxim of Quantity
• A. make your contribution as informative as is
  required (for the current purpose of the
  exchange)
• B. Do not make your contribution more informative
  than is required

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The four cooperative principles

• 3 The Maxim of Relation
• Be relevant

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The four cooperative principles

• 4 The Maxim of Manner
• A. Be perspicuous.
• B. Avoid obscurity of expression.
• C. Avoid ambiguity.
• D. Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).
• F. Be orderly

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6.3.2.2 Conversational implicatures

• According to Grice, utterance interpretation is
  not a matter of decoding messages, but rather
  involves
• (1) taking the meaning of the sentences together
  with contextual information,
• (2) using inference rules
• (3) working out what the speaker means on the
  basis of the assumption that the utterance
  conforms to the maxims. The main advantage of
  this approach from Grices point of view is that
  it provides a pragmatic explanation for a wide
  range of phenomena, especially for conversational
  implicautres--- a kind of extra meaning that is
  not literally contained in the utterance.

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According to Grice, conversational implicatures
can arise from either strictly and directly
observing or deliberately and openly flouting the
maxims, that is, speakers can produce
implicatures in two ways observance and
non-observance of the maxims.

• Ex. (1) Husband Where are the car keys?
• Wife Theyre on the table in the hall.
• The wife has answered clearly (manner) and
  truthfully (Quality), has given just the right
  amount of information (Quantity) and has directly
  addressed her husbands goal in asking the
  question (Relation). She ahs said precisely what
  she meant, no more and no less.

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(2) He is a tiger.

• Example (2) is literally false, openly against
  the maxim of quality, for no human is a tiger.
  But the hearer still assumes that the speaker is
  being cooperative and then infers that he is
  trying to say something distinct from the literal
  meaning. He can then work out that probably the
  speaker meant to say that he has some
  characteristics of a tiger.

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(3) Tom has wooden ears.

• Sentence (3) is obviously false most natural
  contexts and the speaker in uttering it flouts
  the first maxim of quality.

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Conversational implicatures

• Meaning semantic meaning
• intended meaning
  conventional meaning
• 
  unconventional meaning
• (conversational
• implicatures)

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Conversational implicatures

• Unconventional meaning generalized
• scalar
• 
  particularized

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The flouting of cooperative principles

• It is important to note that it is speakers who
  communicate meaning via implicatures and it is
  listeners who recognize those communicated
  meanings via inference. The inferences selected
  are those which will preserve the assumption of
  cooperation. But in fact, the speakers often
  flout the cooperative principles and are still
  thought to be cooperative. What they convey is
  the conversational implicatures.

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The flouting of the maxim of quality

• Ex. (4) Tom does not appreciate classical music
  so we should not invite him to the concert.
• Ex. When we moved here, the room is 5x4, now it
  is 3x4.

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The flouting of maxim of quantity

• Ex. (5) A Where does C live?
• B Somewhere in the South of France.
• Ex. Dear Sir,
• Mr. Xs command of English is excellent and
  his attendance at tutorials has been regular,
  yours, etc.

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The flouting of the maxim of relation

• Ex. (6) A Im out of petrol.
• B There is a garage round the corner.
• Ex. A. Wheres Bill?
• B. Theres a yellow VW outside Sues house.
• Ex. A. What time is it?
• B. The mail has already come.
• Ex. A. The hostess is an awful bore, dont you
  think?
• B. The roses are lovely, arent they?

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The flouting of the maxim of manner

• Ex. (7) A Shall we get something for the kids?
• B But I veto I-C-E-C-R-E-A-M.
• Ex. Miss X produced a series of sounds that
  corresponded closely with the score of Home,
  Sweet Home.

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Tautology it is uninformative by virtue of its
semantic content

• Ex. (8) If he comes, he comes.
• (9) Girls are girls.
• (10) War is war.

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assignments

• I. Define the following terms briefly
• (1) the Cooperative Principle
• (2) conversational implicature
• II. What are the four maxims of the Cooperative
  Principle?
• III. Which maxim does this speaker seem to be
  particularly careful about
• Well, to be quite honest, I dont think she is
  ill today.

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