The Cooperative Principle

Mª Ángeles Martínez
PRAGMATICS & DISCOURSE
2016-2017
 What is pragmatics?
“Pragmatics is the study of meaning in relation to the context in which
a person is speaking or writing. This includes, social, situational and
textual context. It also includes background knowledge context, that is,
what people know about each other and about the world. Pragmatics
assumes that when people communicate with each other they
normally follow some kind of cooperative principle: that is, they have a
shared understanding of how they should cooperate in their
communications. The ways in which people do this, however, varies
across cultures. What may be a culturally appropriate way of saying or
doing something in one culture may not be the same in another
culture. The study of this use of language across cultures is called
cross-cultural pragmatics.” (Paltridge 2012: 38)

Paltridge, Brian (2012) Discourse Analysis. London, New Delhi:

Bloomsbury.
 Pragmatic implicature
• “the action of implying a meaning beyond the literal sense of what
is explicitly stated, for example saying the frame is nice and implying
I don’t like the picture in it.” (Oxford online dictionary)

• “[…] the notion of implicature […] provides some explicit account of

how it is possible to mean (in some general sense) more than what
is actually ‘said’.” (Levinson 1987: 97)

• e.g. A: “Has John arrived?” B. “There’s a red sports car parked

outside.”

• “[…] natural language expressions do tend to have simple, stable

and unitary senses (in many cases anyway), but […] this stable
semantic core often has an unstable, context-specific pragmatic
overlay—namely a set of implicatures.” (Levinson 1987: 99)
 Inference vs. Implicature
• “[inferences] reflect our ability to compute out of utterances
in sequence the contextual assumptions they imply: the facts
about the spatial, temporal and social relationships between
participants, and their requisite beliefs and intentions in
undertaking certain verbal exchanges.” (Levinson 1987: 49)

• e.g.,
A: Will you come to my office with your son early
tomorrow morning, before the meeting begins?
B: OK.
• Implicature: Intended contextual meaning projected by
Speaker

• e.g.,
B: Can you spare a moment now to talk about my son’s
application?
A: Will you come to my office with your son early
tomorrow morning, before the meeting begins?
B: OK
 Grice’s Cooperative Principle
• Make your contribution such as is required, at the
stage in which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or
direction of the talk exchange in which you are
engaged.

• The Cooperative Principle is based on the assumption that

language users try to cooperate in the construction of
meaning for an utterance, and that all utterances, no matter
how weird, have an intended meaning in a particular context
of situation
 Grice’s Maxims of Conversation
• Basic rational considerations guiding a
cooperative use of language to communicate
meaning

• Four maxims: Quality, Quantity, Relevance,

and Manner
 The Four Maxims
• The Maxim of Quality
Try to make your contribution one that is true, specifically:
Do not say what you believe to be false
Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence

• The Maxim of Quantity

Make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purposes of the
exchange
Do not make your contribution more informative than is required

• The Maxim of Relevance

Make your contributions relevant

• The Maxim of Manner

Avoid obscurity
Avoid ambiguity
Be brief
Be orderly
 Conversational implicatures (1)
“propositions or assumptions not encoded, completely or incompletely, in
what is actually said” (Cruse 2000: 349)

a) Standard implicatures:
Those which arise from the assumption that the maxims are being observed,
e.g.

(1) A: How did Harry fare at court the other day?

B: Oh, he got a fine.

(2) Open the door.

(3) Walk up to the door, turn the door handle clockwise as far as it will go, and then pull
gently towards you.

(4) A: I’ve run out of petrol.

B: There’s a garage round the corner.
 Conversational implicatures (2)
b) Implicatures derived from not following the maxims:

People do not always follow these guidelines,

(1) A: What if Brazil blockades the Caribbean?

B: Oh, come on! The US rules the Caribbean seas.

(2) A: Where are the keys?

B: They must be somewhere.

(3) A: Walk up to the door, turn the door handle clockwise as far as it will go, and then
pull gently towards you.

• In these cases (which are very frequent), “we try to interpret B’s utterance a
nevertheless cooperative at some deeper (not superficial) level.” (Levinson 1987: 102),
so we wonder what connection there may be between A’s question and B’s answer.
 Not observing the maxims (1)
• Flouting the maxims: Overtly exploiting them for some communicative purpose
(1) Mister Brown produced a series of sounds corresponding closely to an aria from
Rigoletto.
Mister Brown sang an aria from Rigoletto.
(2) Boys will be boys

• Violating the maxims: Non-overtly infringing them so as to misguide the listener:

“pragmatic misleading”
e.g., lies, half-truths, misguiding assertions in trials, interrogations, or police
statements

• Infringing the maxims: Failing to observe a maxim with no intention to deceive,

eg., when a speaker does not have the linguistic capacity to answer a question.

• Opting out of a maxim: “where the speaker may, for ethical or legal reasons, refuse
to say something that breaches a confidentiality agreement that they have with
someone or is likely to incriminate them in some way.” (Paltridge 2012: 47)
 Opting out of a maxim
e.g. (Paltridge 2012: 46)A newly-arrived American student stops a Chinese
student in the street and asks for directions to the train station. As they walk
down the road together, they engage in this exchange:

Ch: What do you do in America?

Am: I work in a bank.
Ch: It’s a good job, isn’t it?
Am Well, just so.
Ch: How much is your salary every month?
Am: Oh no.
Ch: What’s wrong?
Am: Why are you asking that?
Ch: Just asking, nothing else…
Am: The station isn’t far, isn’t it?

The American student quickly hails a taxi and takes it to the station.

Paltridge, Brian (2012) Discourse Analysis. London: Bloomsbury.

 The Cooperative Principle: Exercises
(Bloor 1988)
Think about the following utterances in terms of Gricean maxims and implicature. You
will have to provide circumstances, non-verbal language, intonation, etc:

1. If you don’t do this exercise, I’ll kill you.

2. Linguistics books cost a fortune.

3. A: What was the lecture on pragmatics like?

B: Well, it lasted two hours.

4. A: What was the lecture on pragmatics like?

B: Fascinating!

5. A:What was the lecture on pragmatics like?

B: Have you seen any good films lately?

6. A: Could I borrow your book?

B: The library is just across the road.
 Properties of implicatures (1)
• Criteria proposed to distinguish conversational implicatures from other
pragmatic/semantic phenomena, such as entailments and conventional
implicatures.

• Entailment: A semantic relationship that applies between two sentences,

where the truth of one “entails” the truth of the other because of the core
lexical properties of the words involved,

(1) John killed the wasp The wasp died

(2) a. John didn’t manage to go to the party

b. John tried to go to the party

(3) a. John didn’t go to the party

b. John tried to go to the party
• Conventional implicatures: non-truth-conditional aspects of
meaning which are always conventionally attached to specific
linguistic forms, such as but, and, even, therefore, or yet.

“These differences are part of the meanings of certain linguistic forms,

and if these forms are used without the intention of carrying the
meaning, then they are being misused.” (Cruse 2000: 350):

(1) She picked her things and left the room (chronological sequence).
(2) She was a girl but intelligent. (What is conventionally implied by
but here?
(3) They were poor but honest.
 Properties of implicatures (2)
• Context-dependence
• Defeasibility/Cancellability
• Non-detachability
• Calculability
 Context-dependence
• “An expression with a single meaning (i.e. expressing
the same proposition) can give rise to different
conversational implicatures in different contexts.”
(Cruse 2000: 349)
(1) A: Have you brushed your teeth and
washed your hands?
B: I’ve brushed my teeth.
(2) A: Would you like another biscuit?
B: I’ve brushed my teeth.
 Defeasibility/Cancellability
• Conversational implicatures can be cancelled by
adding some additional premises to the original
ones,

e.g. A: Have you brushed your teeth and washed your

hands?
B: I’ve brushed my teeth. Look at my hands.
 Non-detachability
• The implicature is attached to the semantic content of
what is said, not to its linguistic form, and so
“implicatures cannot be detached from an utterance
simply by changing the words of the utterance.”
(Levinson 1987: 116)

e.g. (1) A: It’s a little cold in here, isn’t it?

B: Shall I close the window?

(2) A: Don’t you feel cold?

B: Shall I close the window?
 Calculability
• This allows distinguishing conversational
implicatures from individual agreements such
as passwords.

• The calculation is based on the Cooperative

Principle and the observation or non-
observation of the maxims.
 Maxim clashes
• Sometimes observing a maxim may involve
violating another, as in:

• A: How are you today?

B: Just fine.
 Limitations of the Cooperative
Principle
• Maxim overlap
• Intercultural pragmatics

(1) After a job interview: “We’ll call you in a couple of weeks.” (Flouting Quality in
some cultures)

(2) “How are you?” “Fine.” (Flouting Quantity in some cultures)

(3) “Shall I pick you uo at the airport?” “Well, it’s not really necessary.”

(4) At a job interview in Britain, Indian candidate:

Interviewer: “Have you any experience with computers?”

Candidate: “Yes.”