COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLE

(P.H.GRICE 1975)
• The cooperative principles (the four
maxims)
• Flouting the maxims - Conversational
implicatures
• Tasks
 CO-OPERATIVE PRINCIPLE
• Grice’s principle is formulated as follows: ‘Make your 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’.
• According to this principle we interpret language on the assumption
that its sender is obeying (observing) four maxims:
• 1. Maxim of quantity: Make your contribution as informative as is
required for the current purpose of the exchange. Do not make your
contribution more informative than is required.
• 2. Maxim of quality: Do not say what you believe to be false; Do
not say that for which you lack evidence.
• 3. Maxim of Relation: Be relevant
• 4. Maxim of Manner: Avoid obscurity of expression; Avoid
ambiguity; Be brief; Be orderly.
 HEDGES

• Because these principles are assumed in normal interaction,

speakers rarely mention them. However, there are certain
expressions used to mark that speakers may be in danger of not
fully adhering to the principles. These expressions are called
‘hedges’. The following examples are taken from Yule (1996:38-39):
• E.g.:
• Quality:
• As far as I know, they’re married
• Quantity:
• As you probably know, I am afraid of dogs.
• Relation:
• Not to change the subject, but is this related to the budget?
• Manner:
• b. I’m not sure if this makes sense, but the car had no lights.
 FLOUTING THE MAXIMS
The situations which chiefly interested Grice were those
in which a speaker blatantly, deliberately, fails to
observe a maxim, not with any intention of deceiving or
misleading, but because the speaker wants to prompt
the hearer to look for a meaning which is different from
the expressed meaning.

These are intended violations of the maxims; the sender

intends the receiver to perceive them as such. If the
sender does not intend violations to be perceived as
such, or if the receiver does not realise that they are
deliberate, then communication degenerates into lying,
or simply breaks down.
CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATURES
• The basic assumption in conversation is that, unless
otherwise indicated, the participants are adhering to some
shared rules of conversation, which he calls the Co-
operative Principle :
E.g. A: I hope you brought the bread and the cheese.
B: Ah, I brought the bread.
• In order for A to understand B’s reply, A has to assume
that B is co-operating, and has given B the right amount
of information. But he didn’t mention the cheese. If he
had brought the cheese he would have said so. He must
intend that A infer that what is not mentioned was not
brought. In this case B has conveyed more than he said
via a conversational implicature.
 FLOUTING THE MAXIM OF
QUALITY
E.g. (source, Thomas, 1995:55)
Late on Christmas Eve 1993 an ambulance is sent
to pick up a man who has collapsed in Newcastle
city centre. The man is drunk and vomits all over
the ambulanceman who goes to help him. The
ambulanceman says:
‘Great, that’s really great! That’s made my
Christmas!’
QUESTION: What implicature is generated?
 FLOUTING THE MAXIM OF
QUANTITY
Eg. (Mey:69)
• A: We’ll all miss Bill and Agatha, won’t
we?
• B: Well, we’ll all miss Bill.

QUESTION: What implicature is generated?

 FLOUTING THE MAXIM OF
RELATION
• E.g. (taken from Thomas, 1995:70)
• Geoffrey is a vicar, trying hard to curry favour with his
bishop. The speaker is Susan, his wife, who couldn’t
care less about the church or religion:
• ‘We were discussing the ordination of women. The
bishop asked me what I thought. Should women take
the services? So long as it doesn’t have to be me, I
wanted to say, they can be taken by a trained gorilla.
‘Oh yes”, Geoffrey chips in ‘Susan’s all in favour. She’s
keener than I am, aren’t you, darling?’. More sprouts
anybody? I said.
QUESTION: What implicature is generated?
 FLOUTING THE MAXIM OF
MANNER
E.g. (taken form Thomas, 1995:71)
• This interaction occurred during a radio
interview with an un-named official from United
States Embassy in Port-au-Prince Haiti:
• Interviewer: Did the United States
Government play any part in Duvalier’s
departure? Did they, for example, actively
encourage him to leave?
• Official: I would not try to steer you away from
that conclusion.
 TASK

• Explain the following in terms of the

cooperative principle:
• metaphors (‘Queen Victoria was made of
iron’)
• hyperbole (‘I’ve got millions of beers in
my cellar’)
• irony and sarcasm (‘I love it when you
sing out of key all the time’)
OTHER WAYS OF NOT OBSERVING
THE MAXIMS
• Opting out, i.e refusing to answer. Such an example is Bill Clinton’s
response to a journalist who was asking him about the Whitewater
affair, a scandal in which Bill and Hillary were involved. When the
journalist asked the question, Clinton took his microphone off, got
out of his seat, told the journalist he’d had his two questions and
went off.
• Suspending the (universality of) maxims
• There are occasions/situations/cultures when it appears that there
is no expectation that all the maxims will be observed. Compare an
interrogation with a confessional.
• Infringing:
• A speaker who, with no intention of generating an implicature and
with no intention of deceiving, fails to observe a maxim.
 TASKS
1. Which maxims are flouted in the following ex?

• a. I think I’ll go for a W-A-L-K (spelling the word letter

by letter in front of a dog)
• b. [At a dinner party]: Is there anywhere I can powder
my nose?
• c. This meal is delicious (said by a guest who finds the
food disgusting)
• d. Child: I’m going to watch Match of the Day now.
Parent: What was that Maths homework you said you
had?
(Source: Cook, 1989)
 TASKS
[A is working at a computer in one of the department’s lab when she experiences
a problem]
• A: Can you help me?
• B: Graeme’s office hour is in five minutes
[Jonathan, sensitive about his lack of progress in Italian, has just returned from
an Italian evening class]
• Elena: What did you do?
• Jonathan: This and that.
[Victor has been buried up to his neck in the back garden by an irate builder. His
wife, Margaret, comes out]
• M: What are you doing?
• V: I’m wallpapering the spare bedroom, what the hell do you think I’m
doing?
(One Foot in the Grave, BBC 12/11/96)
 TASKS
• [This is part of the queen’s speech at the
anniversary of her 40th year on the
throne. It had been a bad year for the
queen - marital difficulties of her children,
the Windsor Palace had gone up in
flames]
• Queen: 1992 is not a year which I shall
look back with undiluted pleasure.
 TASKS
1. ( Thomas, 1995:65):
• The speaker is Rupert Allason (author, M.P. and expert on the
British intelligence services). He is discussing the identity of the so-
called ‘Fifth Man’:
• It was either Graham Mitchell or Roger Hollis and I don’t think it
was Roger Hollis.
2. (Thomas, 1995:68)
• B was on a long journey and wanted to read her book. A was a
fellow passenger who wanted to talk to her:
• A: What do you do?
• B: I’m a teacher.
• A: Where do you teach?
• B: Outer Mongolia
• A: Sorry I asked.
 TASKS

3. ( Thomas, 1995:70):
• I finished working on my face. I grabbed
my bag and a coat. I told mother I was
going out…She asked me where I was
going. I repeated myself ‘Out’.