Transcript Grice’s Maxims

Grice’s Maxims
LO: to understand the
co-operative principle
and how we can use it
within our own analysis.
Grice’s Maxims
• The philosopher Paul Grice proposed
four conversational maxims that
arise from the pragmatics of natural
language. These maxims are:
RELEVANCE
QUALITY
GRICE’S
MAXIMS
QUANTITY
MANNER
Grice’s Maxims
Maxim of Quality: Truth
• Do not say what you believe to be false.
• Do not say that for which you lack adequate
evidence.
Maxim of Quantity: Information
• 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.
Grice’s Maxim
Maxim of Relation: Relevance
• Be relevant.
Maxim of Manner: Clarity
• Avoid obscurity of expression.
• Avoid ambiguity.
• Be brief
• Be orderly.
Grice’s Maxims
Philosopher Kent Bach writes:
‘We need first to get clear on the character of
Grice’s maxims. They are not sociological
generalizations about speech, nor they are moral
prescriptions or proscriptions on what to say or
communicate. Although Grice presented them in
the form of guidelines for how to communicate
successfully, I think they are better construed as
presumptions about utterances, presumptions that
we as listeners rely on and as speakers exploit.’
(Bach 2005).
Grice’s Maxims
Grice did not, however, assume that all
people should constantly follow these
maxims.
He found it interesting when the
maxims were broken.
Grice’s Maxims
The speaker goes
off on a tangent.
FLOUT
To deliberately avoid
a response
To unintentionally
break a maxim
Broken
Maxims
The listener infers
Some meaning.
VIOLATE
Act 2 scene 2
• Hamlet flouts all 4 of Grice’s Maxims.
• Primary purpose to avoid giving a true answer, (quality,) that
may lead to his own death.
• Taunting (relevance,) reduces the status of power.
•
Hamlet gives misleading short responses then long
convoluted responses which are obscure. (quantity.)
• Hamlet’s language choices about Polonius are indirectly
rude, (Manner.)