The Cooperative

Principle
The seventh week
 Key points
 The Cooperative Principle and its maxims
 Conversational implicatures
 Difficulties
 The violations of the cooperation maxims
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.
 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)
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
The four cooperative principles
 [3]The Maxim of
Relation
 Be relevant
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
 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 Grice’s 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.
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: They’re 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 husband’s goal in asking the
question (Relation). She has said precisely what
she meant, no more and no less.
 (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”.
 (3) Tom has wooden ears.
 Sentence (3) is obviously false in most
natural contexts and the speaker in
uttering it flouts the first maxim of quality.
 Conversational implicatures
 Meaning: semantic meaning
 intended meaning conventional meaning
 unconventional meaning

 (conversational
 implicatures)
 Conversational implicatures
 Unconventional meaning generalized
 scalar


particularized
 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.
 (Flout: to disobey intentionally (a rule or low), or to avoid
intentionally (behavior that is usual or expected)
 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.
The flouting of maxim of quantity
 Ex. (5) A: Where does C live?
 B: Somewhere in the South of France.
 Ex. Dear Sir,
 Mr. X’s command of English is
excellent and his attendance at tutorials
has been regular, yours, etc.
 The flouting of the maxim of
relation:
 Ex. (6) A: I’m out of petrol.
 B: There is a garage round the corner.
 Ex. A. Where’s Bill?
 B. There’s a yellow VW outside Sue’s house.
 Ex. A. What time is it?
 B. The mail has already come.
 Ex. A. The hostess is an awful bore, don’t you
think?
 B. The roses are lovely, aren’t they?
 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”.
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.
 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 don’t think she
is ill today.