Pragmatics, awareness raising, and

the Cooperative Principle

Neil Murray

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In recent years, pedagogical pragmatics has sought to improve the effectiveness
with which learners express and interpret meaning, through awareness-raising
activities that draw on authentic materials and break away from simplistic
explanations of form–function correspondences. By and large, these efforts have
been informed by an inductive approach through which, over time, learners can
infer general principles governing appropriate language use from an
understanding of particular speech acts based on observation, description, and
classroom discussion. This paper argues that learners can simultaneously benefit
from a deductive approach which develops an appreciation of those general
principles that background the performance and interpretation of speech acts. It is
suggested that Grice’s Cooperative Principle provides a useful means through
which to implement such an approach and help ensure that learners use language
in a socially appropriate way.

Pragmatic Pragmatic competence can be defined as an understanding of the

competence: what is relationship between form and context that enables us, accurately and
it and why bother appropriately, to express and interpret intended meaning. The ability to do
with it? this can be critical to our success as communicators, and the stakes can often
be high. The consequences of misinterpretation or the inappropriate use
of language can range from unfortunate to catastrophic. Interviews have
been failed, fortunes ruined, relationships irretrievably damaged, and, as
Widdowson (1990: 95) illustrates, major battles such as the Charge of the
Light Brigade lost due to pragmatic failure. Yet, as Blum-Kulka, House, and
Kasper (1989: 10) observe, ‘Even fairly advanced language learners’
communicative acts regularly contain pragmatic errors, or deficits, in that
they fail to convey or comprehend the intended illocutionary force or
politeness value [of utterances]’. Bardovi-Harlig (1996: 21) further notes that
‘a learner of high grammatical proficiency will not necessarily show
concomitant pragmatic competence’—a real concern given that people are
more forgiving, it seems, of grammatical mistakes than of pragmatic failure
(Crandall and Basturkmen 2004: 38).
Clearly, then, we have a responsibility to try and develop our students’
pragmatic competence and help them better appreciate and understand
how form and context interact to create meaning. It is encouraging,
therefore, that research appears to indicate that learners can benefit from

E LT Journal Volume 64/3 July 2010; doi:10.1093/elt/ccp056 293

ª The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved.
Advance Access publication July 27, 2009
 a systematic focus on pragmatics in language instruction (see for example
Morrow 1995 and Crandall and Basturkmen ibid.)

Traditional Traditionally, the efforts of materials’ writers to develop learners’ pragmatic

approaches to competence have generally consisted of the presentation of ‘lists of useful
teaching pragmatics expressions’ (Crandall and Basturkmen ibid.) and conversations and
dialogues offering pragmatically inaccurate models (see Bardovi-Harlig op.
cit.: 23–6). In an effort to promote the performance of language functions in
ways that are appropriate to context, statements of the kind ‘Expression
X can be used in situations 1, 2, and 3’ or ‘To perform function Y, one can
use expressions 4, 5, and 6’ have been commonplace. Unfortunately, while
this may pay lip service to the importance of context to meaning, so integral
to the communicative approach to language teaching, it is questionable
whether it is actually developing pragmatic competence at all. Learners are

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merely being told what is the case (‘X is appropriate in Y situation’) but not
why (the conventions that make it so) in anything other than vague terms
(‘It’s polite’, ‘it’s more polite than B’, etc.). There has been little emphasis on
what Bachman (1990: 89) refers to as an ‘examination of the pragmatic
conditions that determine whether or not a given utterance is acceptable to
other users of the language as an act, or the performance of an intended
function’. This means that whatever learners glean of the relationship
between form and function—between what is said and what is meant—its
applicability is largely restricted to the particular instances of its use they
have experienced in their learning. They are consequently deprived of the
kind of productivity that comes from an understanding of general principles
and the process of discovery that such understanding enables. One response
to this situation is to provide learners with increased opportunities to
explore the pragmatic principles, or ‘social grammar’, governing the
associations between certain language forms and the particular situations of
their deployment, and to develop an appreciation of the impact of those
principles on how meaning is realized.

New directions for It is encouraging to note that, in the last few years, the literature has reflected
pedagogical a growing recognition among teachers and applied linguists of the need to
pragmatics address the relationship between pragmatics and language teaching in
a more productive way and to develop teaching techniques and materials
that raise learners’ awareness and ultimately control of this crucial aspect of
communication (see for example Bardovi-Harlig op. cit.; Eslami-Rasekh
2005). This new emphasis on ‘pedagogical pragmatics’ is a very welcome
development.
To date, the principal focus of pedagogical pragmatics remains the speech
act—not surprising, perhaps, seeing as the expression and interpretation
of meaning is fundamentally about the way in which speech acts are
realized, or as Austin (1962) put it, how we do things with words. Flowerdew
(1990), among others, has, however, questioned this approach on the
grounds that it is impracticable given the enormous number of speech acts
and the fact that there is no obvious instructional order other than one based
on frequency of occurrence or student need; yet it remains the mainstay
of efforts to bring pragmatics into the classroom. Bardovi-Harlig (op. cit.: 31)
argues that rather than focusing on the intricacies of, say, complimenting,

294 Neil Murray

 direction giving, or closing a conversation, we should be making learners
‘more aware that pragmatic functions exist in language, specifically in
discourse, in order that they may be more aware of these functions as
learners’. While I would claim that learners are already fully aware of the
existence of pragmatic functions, thanks to their L1s, I do agree with
Bardovi-Harlig’s notion that students should be ‘encouraged to think for
themselves about culturally appropriate ways to compliment a friend or say
goodbye to a teacher’ as a way of ‘awakening their own lay abilities for
pragmatic analysis’. What I hope to show, however, is that learners need
to be given a vocabulary or metalanguage through which to do this and
which will, in Bardovi-Harlig’s words, ‘prepare learners for noticing’.
Awakening learners’ lay abilities for pragmatic analysis is an idea that is
developed by Eslami-Rasekh (op. cit.), Crandall and Basturkmen (op. cit.),
and others, as well as Bardovi-Harlig herself, and the following list

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highlights some of the activities they employ in order to do this:
n Focusing on speech acts that reflect learner needs or interests.
n Focusing on speech acts in the performance of which deviation from the
L1 norm is most critical to meaning and interpersonal relations.
n Using authentic materials.
n Engaging learners in discourse completion tasks.
n Having students translate speech acts from their own language into
English and discuss the pragmatic norms of different speech
communities.
n Encouraging learners to become their own ethnographers and to observe
how speech acts are realized in the L2 and in particular contexts. This
may involve collecting, analysing, and reporting on data.
n Incorporating native-speaker role plays into classroom activities as a focus
of student observation. Developing observation tasks around these and
allowing learners to ask the native speakers questions, etc.
n Providing opportunities for consideration and guided discussion of how
speech acts function in the learners’ own languages, and the
consequences of inappropriately enacting those rules governing their
performance.
n Using video as a vehicle for getting students to compare how speech acts
are realized differently in different contexts.
n Having students choose a speech act they are interested in and observe it
in naturalistic or rehearsed settings.

A complementary These ideas offer interesting and useful contributions to the debate on
approach: induction pedagogical pragmatics. Through a process of awareness raising based on
and deduction in creative and motivating ideas, they facilitate learners’ understanding of ways
awareness raising in which particular speech acts are realized in the target language. And it
seems to me that there is an inductive approach at work here, one in which
observation of particulars leads to an understanding of general principles:
over time, through regularly engaging in activities of the above kind,
learners will gradually induce the broader principles that govern the choices
we make in language in order to effectively and appropriately convey
meaning. What I should like to suggest, however, is that learners can
simultaneously benefit from a deductive approach through which an
appreciation of those general and universal principles (discussed earlier)

Pragmatics, awareness raising, and the Cooperative Principle 295

 that govern language choices and our ability to be appropriate is instilled in
them early on. This would give them a kind of toolkit which they could use
to analyse the performance of particular speech acts in particular settings,
and to consider the forces shaping meaning. These principles have, of
course, been learnt and applied unconsciously by learners as an integral part
of acquiring their first language, but they have most likely never been
brought to consciousness and articulated; yet only once learners have
a ‘language’ or toolkit with which to do this can they begin to really notice
and talk about speech act realization in the L2 and the fact that these
principles operate in all languages but are frequently manifested differently,
often with considerable implications for cross-cultural communication and
the way in which we are understood and perceived by others. What I am
proposing, then, is that by raising students’ awareness of the general
principles, we increase the likelihood that they will notice and learn their

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particular realizations in English.

Adopting So what are these ‘general principles’? This is where we come to Grice.
a pedagogical Despite some 40 years having passed since it was first expounded, and while
framework not originally intended for pedagogical use, I believe his Cooperative
Principle with its four conversational maxims offers language teachers and
learners one potentially useful guide to etiquette in communication and
the socially appropriate use of language. It provides a framework which,
through regular and skilfully guided classroom discussion, can help ensure
that the principles emerge and help learners to develop precisely the kind
of toolkit to which I have referred. In order to make it of more relevance
and practical use within this context, the approach I describe here recasts
Grice in a way that diverges somewhat from the traditional reading of
his work within mainstream pragmatics and in this respect can best be
regarded as orienting to or having been inspired by the Cooperative Principle.
Grice’s (1967: 27) four maxims, then, are as follows:
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.
Quality: Do not say what you believe to be false. Do not say that for which
you lack adequate evidence.
Relation: Be relevant.
Manner: Be perspicuous. Avoid obscurity of expression. Avoid ambiguity.
Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity). Be orderly.
According to Grice, there is a general agreement of cooperation between
participants in conversation who, in upholding that agreement, conform to
these maxims, at least at a superficial level. In reality of course, and as Grice
well knew, the maxims are frequently flouted; yet because we know that
fundamentally speakers are cooperative, we are able to work out what is
meant by what is said when a maxim is flouted. In other words, the so-called
‘implication of utterance’ is dependent upon there being a principle such as
Grice’s which serves as a common frame of reference that enables us to
express our meaning in various ways and with varying degrees of directness,
yet remain confident that it will be interpreted as intended. Crucially

296 Neil Murray

 though, the way in which we uphold and flout these universal maxims, and
the communicative effects achieved, will vary from culture to culture,
language to language. And this is precisely why pragmatics needs learning.

Classroom/materials Together and with appropriate amplification, Grice’s maxims have

applications considerable explanatory power regarding the choices we make about what
we say and how we say it. As such, they provide a suitable basis for
a broad range of activities that can focus learners’ attention on issues of
appropriateness, acceptability, and the effective expression and
identification of intended meaning. As a teacher, of course, one would not
present learners with these maxims in their raw form but might instead
pose investigative questions designed to elicit them and encourage
reflection. They might then subsequently be recast in more user-friendly
terms. Thus, if dealt with in enough detail and given careful prompting on

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the part of the teacher, a question such as:
During conversation, what do you think are some of the things that
influence what we say and how we say it?
can be quite productive. Possible answers include:
1 who it is we’re talking to and our relationship to them
2 where the communication’s taking place
3 the feelings of the other person
4 the impression we want to give of ourselves
5 the kind of image we want to project
6 our purpose in communicating
7 what has been said previously in the conversation
8 how much we want to share with the person we’re talking to
9 our attitude or emotional state at the time.
The teacher could then follow-up these replies with the question, ‘How do
these things affect what we say and how we say it?’ The idea at this stage
would be to generate general rather than specific observations. Students’
responses might include:
a They sometimes affect the amount we say.
b They may affect how direct we are.
c We might not say exactly what we feel.
d We may lie or be dishonest.
e Our language might be more formal or more casual, depending.
f We may be vague or deliberately unclear.
For the time being, teachers can deal with more specific answers by
referring them to these more general categories: ‘That’s right, Tomoko. So
really it has to do with (b), how direct we are’.
The next step involves encouraging the students to delve more deeply into
the relationship between the motivation for what we say and how we say
it (1–9) and the way in which these factors are reflected in types of language
behaviour (a)–(f). This can be done via a series of prompts that invite
them to consider, in more specific terms, the effects of language behaviour
in relation to items 1–9. Such prompts could include:

Pragmatics, awareness raising, and the Cooperative Principle 297

 X Why are we sometimes indirect in the way we say things?
Y What happens when we use very informal language in formal situations?
Z Why might the amount we say be important?
Why might we say more than we need to say?
Why might we say less? Can you think of a specific example?
In the case of Z, answers might be along the following lines:
n If we don’t say enough, people won’t understand us.
n If we’re too brief, people might feel we’re hiding something, or maybe
we’re unwilling to say more.
n If we say very little it might seem unfriendly or rude.
n It allows us to be rude or unfriendly if we want to . . . if we don’t like
someone or their behaviour, say.
n Being quiet or saying very little tells the other person that you sympathize

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with them.
n People see us as boring if we say too much.
n People don’t like individuals who talk too much and dominate
conversations. It’s a power thing.
n It’s not good to stand out too much.
n We might say less because we want to show respect for the person we’re
talking to; maybe he’s our boss, for example, or he’s older than us.
n By not saying much, we can show that we feel hurt or angry . . . or maybe
we’re objecting or disagreeing with them.
This type of response provides an opportunity to consider examples of
actual language use, which in turn allows the principles to take on a more
concrete, meaningful aspect.
An alternative to prompting students in this way is to ask the more general
question, ‘In what ways do the things we’ve listed in 1–9 affect what we
say and how we say it (the things we’ve listed in (a)–(e)? Can you say more
about the connections between them and give some examples?’ This
approach will elicit remarks such as:
n If we’re very close to someone we’ll probably be more direct and say exactly
what we feel.
n If it’s a relaxed, informal situation we’ll probably talk more and use more
casual language.
n Sometimes we lie because we don’t want to hurt the other person’s
feelings. For instance, . . .
The language in which these questions are presented to students and the
sophistication of the responses will depend upon learners’ levels of
proficiency, and teachers will need to adjust their language and expectations
accordingly, along with the pace at which the material is worked through.
There is certainly room to simplify the ideas involved and their expression
for the benefit of less proficient students, and while use of the L2 should be
encouraged, I see no good reason for denying students access to their L1
should they need it, given that the object of the exercise is not primarily
linguistic but to increase their pragmatic awareness.
Once learners begin considering questions concerning the communicative
significance of dimensions, such as indirectness, irrelevance, terseness, and

298 Neil Murray

vagueness, and discussing examples of actual language use, there will
inevitably be variation in their perception of such features according to L1
background and the nature of the corresponding form–function
relationships. Eslami-Rasekh (2005: 203), for example cites the fact that in
Persian, when you make offers, the more forceful and direct you are, the
more polite it is. Instances such as this will emphasize for the learner the
need to develop an understanding of how meaning is expressed in the L2,
and once students can see the significance of the object of their learning,
they are that much more motivated to engage in the learning process itself.
Having ‘unlocked’ the general principles, the more focused questions (X, Y,
and Z) provide the teacher with a platform from which to highlight the
fact that the functions which indirectness, for example, serves in helping
establish the illocutionary force of an utterance in a given context in one

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culture may be different from that which it serves in the same context in
another culture where the shared social conventions guiding interpretation
are different.
Video/D V D that presents learners with authentic discourse lends itself well
to such a contrastive approach, as do group-work and pair-work activity.
And multilingual groups provide a particularly rich environment for such
analysis and discussion, developing as they do an appreciation of variation
in speech act realization and its potential significance.
It is important to emphasize that the kind of top-down, deductive approach
being suggested here would not supersede but run in tandem with the
more bottom-up, inductive approach underpinning awareness-raising
activities of the type listed earlier as bullet points. It is envisaged that
teachers would continue to focus on those speech acts of greatest potential
relevance to their students and to present and discuss them in the ways
suggested. However, developing an appreciation of the broader principles at
work in their production will enhance this process by making it more
engaging and giving them added meaning and significance. Below is an
example of one way in which I have used this combination of inductive and
deductive approaches to good effect. It shows the steps taken in a lesson
designed to help students understand the expression of dislike in English.
1 Elicit/explain the importance of focusing on the expression of dislike and
the potential for things to go awry when trying to express dislike in
another language.
2 Present dialogues and/or video clips that incorporate authentic examples
of dislike being expressed in different ways in a variety of different
contexts, including instances of inappropriate expression. Examples
(decontextualized here):

Outside a cinema
A I didn’t think much of that!
B Really, I thought it was great.
C Me too. I really liked it.
At a party
A What do you think of my new dress?
B I think the shoes are gorgeous!

Pragmatics, awareness raising, and the Cooperative Principle 299

 At home
A Tell me what you think of Ali?
B He’s not exactly what I expected.
In a job interview for a position as a primary school teacher
A Cynthia, would you say you like dealing with difficult children?
B I wouldn’t say I love it but I do see it as a challenge that comes with the
territory.
In a university seminar
A So what do you think of my approach?
B I don’t like it; it’s too direct and I think you’re on the wrong track
completely.
Two friends talking
A And this is my wedding dress.

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B Oh, I don’t like it.
3 Have students describe, in each case, their observations of how dislike is
being expressed and how (in the case of video) it appears to be received.
Encourage students to compare and contrast and, where possible,
notice non-verbal as well as verbal behaviour. The teacher can prompt
students, agree, disagree, etc.
4 Have students interpret what they have described and think about the
reasons why dislike is being expressed differently in the various
contexts, what the expectations are, and what the speaker is trying to
achieve. Urge students to draw on notions discussed previously in the
unpacking of Grice’s maxims (and described above). Students may, for
example, discuss why dislike is expressed far more directly in the
university seminar exchange than it is in the party exchange or (for more
advanced students) why, in the interview, the candidate uses the modal
verb ‘would’ and feels the need to amplify her response by referring to
the nature of the job. A useful extension of this step is to ask hypothetical
questions, for example: ‘What do you think would have happened if the
interviewee had answered, ‘‘I don’t like it’’?’
5 Following discussion, give a more formal, structured presentation on
the ways in which dislike tends to be expressed in English in different
situations and why.
6 For any general principles highlighted (for example being indirect to
save the feelings of our interlocutor), elicit from students other
pragmatic functions that may see these same principles at work; for
example refusing an invitation—a situation in which we may not only be
indirect but untruthful too.
7 Have students compare and contrast the expression of dislike in their
own languages/cultures and the reasons underlying any similarities and
differences. Ask them to describe how the above exchanges might be
realized in their own languages.
8 Practice/role play: create a series of authentic contexts, assign roles to
students, and have them create short dialogues requiring them to
express dislike appropriately according to context. Have them comment
on each other’s performances.
Crucially, the success of the above activities is evaluated not merely
according to how accurately and appropriately the students are able to

300 Neil Murray

 express dislike but also evidence of their ability to reflect on what underlies
the performance of the speech act. As a teacher, one is looking for students
to demonstrate over time, through regular inclusion of these kinds of
activities across a range of speech acts, (a) an increased aptitude for
analysing speech acts using the ‘vocabulary’ or toolkit discussed above and
acquired early on in their course and (b) an increased appreciation of the
variability that exists across languages in speech act realization, and its
criticality to how we are understood.
Finally, by sensitizing learners to the general principles backgrounding
speech act realization, we can empower our learners by helping ensure that
they approach the many speech acts that will not and cannot possibly be
covered in the classroom with some awareness of what may be ‘going on’ in
their production. In other words, while this approach complements and

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adds depth and richness to the classroom analysis of speech acts, it also
provides learners with the means to analyse and reflect on speech acts they
have not been exposed to in their formal learning and which appear in the
particular contexts in which they ultimately find themselves using the
language.
Final revised version received June 2009

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Austin, J. L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words.
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Bachman, L. 1990. Fundamental Principles of
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Bardovi-Harlig, K. 1996. ‘Pragmatics and language
teaching: bringing pragmatics and pedagogy
together’ in L. F. Bouton (ed.). Pragmatics and
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Urbana, IL: University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign.
Blum-Kulka, S., J. House, and G. Kasper. 1989.
‘Investigating cross-cultural pragmatics: an
introductory overview’ in S. Blum-Kulka, J. House,
and G. Kasper (eds.). Cross-cultural Pragmatics:
Requests and Apologies. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Crandall, E. and H. Basturkmen. 2004. ‘Evaluating
pragmatics-focused materials’. E LT Journal 58/1:
38–49.
Eslami-Rasekh, Z. 2005. ‘Raising the pragmatic
awareness of language learners’. E LT Journal 59/3:
199–208.
Flowerdew, J. 1990. ‘Problems of speech act theory
from an applied perspective’. Language Learning 40:
79–105.
Notes on Logic and Conversation’. The William
James Lectures. Published as Part 1 of H.P. Grice
Studies in the Way of Words. 1989. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Morrow, C. 1995. ‘The effect of classroom instruction
on E S L learners’ production of complaint and
refusal speech acts’. Paper Presented to the Ninth
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Language Learning. Urbana, IL: University of
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The author
Neil Murray is Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics
and Senior Consultant English Language
Proficiency at the University of South Australia.
He has degrees in T E S O L and Applied Linguistics
from the universities of Cambridge and Temple and
a PhD from London University. He has published
articles and books on academic listening and writing
and is currently interested in pragmatics,
intercultural competence, and the development of
academic writing skills.
Email: neil.murray@unisa.edu.au

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