Violating a maxim

2. Violating a maxim

(14) A: Where does Gerard live?

B: Somewhere in the South of France.

B violates Quantity (less information than ‘required’). So how is this co-operative?

Answer:This way B adheres to Quality (don’t say what you know to be false/lack evidence for).So the implicature is: B doesn’t know exactly where Gerard lives.

3. Flouting maxims (exploitation)

Violating a maxim is enforced (usually by clashing maxims).

Flouting is deliberate:

(15) A: What if the USA blocks EU-accession of Cyprus?

B: Oh come on, Europe has all the power! (flouting Quality)

(16) John is John. (flouting Quantity)

(17) A: I do think Mrs Jenkins is an old windbag, don’t you?

B: Huh, lovely weather for March, isn’t it? (flouting Relevance)

(18) Johnny: Hey Sally, let’s play marbles.

Mother: How is your homework getting along, Johnny? (flouting Relevance)

(19) She produced a series of sounds that roughly corresponded to the score of I am alive.(flouting Manner)

• flouting is effectively an invitation to find a new meaning, beyond ‘what is said’ — one that makes the utterance co-operative after all

• flouting is generally associated with particular rhetorical effects

Opting out

A speaker may ‘opt out’ of the Co-operative Principle, i.e. being openly uncooperative:

(20) My lips are sealed; I can say no more.[12]

Part II. Applied Aspects of Conversational Analysis   2.1 Following the cooperative principle

Conversation makes sense to us because they follow certain principles. this is also true with written texts. Grice has outlined the principles in his Cooperative Principles (CP), that means to have conversation as ‘cooperative venture’. Cooperative venture is to get an effective, efficient conversation. So the CP is a mean to make conversation as is effective and efficient one. There are four maxims in the Cooperative Princples.

1.  Be relevant (Maxims of relevance)

Make your contribution relevant to the interaction.

Indicate any way that it is not

Examples:

(a)  Pass the salt.

Implicate: Pass the salt now.

(b): A: How are you doing in school?

B: Not too well, actually. I'm failing two of my classes.

vs. B: What fine weather we're having lately!

2. Be informative (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.

Examples: (a) A: Where is the post office?

B: Down the road, about 50 metres past the second left.

vs. B: Not far.

(b) A: How did Harry face in court the other day?

B: Oh, he got fine.

B’s contribution is what required from A’s utterance. However, still B will be condemned asa being a wrong informer, if then, for example, Harry gets life sentence.

3. Be truthful (Maxim of quality).

Or say things believed to be true and don’t say ones believed to be false.

Examples: (a) John has two PhDs.

Implicates: that I know that John has, and have adequate evidence that he has.

A: Should I buy my son this new sports car?

B: I don't know if that's such a good idea. He's totaled two cars since he got his license last year.

vs. B: No, he seems like he'd be a bad driver.

4. Be clear (Maxim of manner)

Avoid unnecessary prolixity

Avoid ambiguity.

Be brief.

Be orderly.

Examples: A: Where was Alfred yesterday?

B: He went to the store and bought some whiskey.

B is being perspicuous to A. He gives clear response to A.

A: What did you think of that movie?

B: I liked the creative storyline. The ending was really a surprise!

vs. B: It was interestingly done, sir.

Paul Grice admitted that the CP and Maxims of conversation could be applied not only in talk exchange, but also in sphere of transaction.[] He discovered that many people act according to these principles because they were taught to act in such a way and they did not lost this habit.

He tried to find a basis for such behavior and found out that ‘standard type of conversational practice not merely as something that all or most do in fact follow but as something that it is reasonable for us to follow, that we should not abandon.’[8]

Talk exchanges have certain features that jointly distinguish cooperative transactions:

1. The participants have some common immediate aim, even though their ultimate aims may be independent and even in conflict. In characteristic talk exchange, there is a common aim even if , as in an over-the-wall chat, it is a second –order one, namely ,that each partly should, for the time being, identify himself with the transitory conversational interests of the other.

2. The contributions of the participants should be dovetailed, mutually dependent.

3. There is some sort of understanding (which may be explicit but which is often tacit) that, other things being equal, the transaction should continue in appropriate style unless both parties are agreeable that it should terminate. [7]

In spite of that no one ever follows to all the maxims far all time, we might even do not need to, because as we can see, we may rely on implicature, to get the point of our addresser’s idea.