Meiosis

3.  Meiosis

Grice has such an example of meiosis, resulting from flouting the maxim of quality:

‘He was a little intoxicated’

Implication: This man is known to have broken up all the furniture.

4.  Hyperbole. Usually in metaphor the second maxim of Quality is flouted.

Example: Everybody likes ice-cream.

Implication: it is clear, that there are people, who don’t like ice-cream.

It is not easy to find examples in which the second maxim of Quality is flouted, because they are rather contextual. They could be added by gestures, intonation to make the hearer sure that the speaker has a reasonable basis for such sayings.

Example; She’s probably deceiving her husband this evening.

Implication: the speaker posses some evidence of her love affair.

III. Examples of violation of the maxim of Relation.

Perhaps the most important rule is that your utterances must be relevant to the current topic at hand; this is known as the maxim of relevance. Going off-topic constantly will provoke displeasure with your fellow participants.[7]

A: How's the weather today?

B: There's a nice film opening at the theater tonight.

Implication: the answer does not correlate with the question.

Violation of this rule is quite useful in order to force a subject change:

A: Do you really love me?

B: I like Ferris wheels, and college football, and things that go real fast.

Implication: Either B doesn’t want to respond to A (perhaps he has problems discussing his feelings) or the answer is “no.”

C: Are you ever going to pay back the money I lent you?

D: It's very hot outside, isn't it?

Implication: D is not ready to pay back money.

Michael wants Pat to pass the salt. He says, "Could you pass the salt?"

In most cases, this question is not meant literally -- it is pretty clear that Pat is able to pass the salt. Therefore, the question violates some maxims, notably Relevance.

This violation of a maxim helps indicate to Pat that a non-literal use of the sentence is intended (most likely, an indirect request).[4]

IV. Examples in which maxims of Manner are flouted.

1.  Ambiguity.

When the speaker answers with ambiguity, the hearer should define if this ambiguity was deliberate or accidental and react in proper way if it is a conversational game.

According to Grice, there can be two types of deliberate ambiguity:

a)  examples in which there is no difference, or no striking difference, between two interpretations of an utterance with respect to straightforwardness; neither interpretation is notably more sophisticated, less standard. [7]

- I sought to tell my love, love that never told can be.

Implication: My love refers either to the emotions or an object of emotion, but as these notions are contextual synonyms, the flouting of maxim is acceptable.

b) Examples in which one interpretation is notably less straightforward than another.

2.  Obscurity.

Sometimes the obscurity could be used in order to make the conversation unclear to the third party of conversation.[7]

A: Shall we get something for the kids?

B: Ok. But I veto I-C-E-C-R-E-A-M.

Implication: By spelling the word ‘ice-cream’ B wants to make the conversation unclear for children.

3.  Failure to be brief or orderly.

Examples:

Miss B sang ‘Home sweet home’ vs. Miss B produced a series of sounds that corresponded closely with the score of ‘Home sweet home.’

A: When are you coming home?

B: I will codify that question to my superiors and respond at such a time as an adequate answer is preparable.

Implication: B is using unnecessarily complicated and confusing words and construction, because

B does not know or does not wish to give an answer to the question.

It is important to remember, that in English, speakers are accustomed to hearing events in chronological order (in some other languages, word order isn't as important.) This is why "We got married and had a baby", and "We had a baby and got married" have different meanings altogether.

Speakers sometimes deliberately violate the rules of ordinary conversation to achieve certain ends

Example:

1. A: Would you like to go out with Andrea?

B: Is the Pope Catholic?

Violated maxim: Relevance

Motivation: B is being humorous. By replying with a question whose answer is obvious, he is implying that the answer to A’s question is equally obvious: Yes!

2. A: I’ll pay you back in full next week, I promise.

B: Sure, and pigs will fly and fish will sing.

Violated maxim: Relevance

Motivation: B’s response implies sarcastically that he does not believe A.

3. A: What are the three most important things in real estate?

B: Location, location, and location.

Violated maxim: Quantity

Motivation: To emphasize the overwhelming importance of location

4. A: So tell me, do you like what I did to my hair?

B: Er…what’s on TV tonight?

Violated maxim: Relevance

Motivation: B does not like A’s hairstyle, so he changed the subject.

5. A: How can I develop a great body like yours?

B: Choose your parents carefully.

Violated maxim: Quality

Motivation: Indirectly saying that it is impossible, because it’s all in the genes.[4]

General conclusion

The aim of our work was to describe the rules of conversation according to Paul Grice’s philosophy and demonstrate their practical application.

At the first part we mentioned that Paul Grice was rather a philosopher than a linguist, that’s why we made the argument for the necessity of reading Grice’s work ‘Logic and conversation’ in the philosophical context, rather than in isolation. Then, a consideration of this context showed a number of themes which recurred: logic, conventional/non-conventional and, most importantly, rationality.

Grice’s interests were in the system of language; that it is an example of human rational action, and thus can be accounted for through some variety of logic (although, not traditional formal logic, perhaps). His aim was to find the logic of conversation which could account for the gap between saying and meaning, saying and implicating, conventional and non-conventional meaning. The logic that he sought was seen as a manifestation of rational action.

Grice’s articles (1957, 1967) have a profound influence on speech act theory. Grice proformulated the idea that ordinary communication takes place not directly by means of convention, but in virtue of a speaker’s evincing certain intentions and getting his or her audience to recognize those intentions (and to recognize that it was the speaker’s intention to secure the recognition). In his view, the utterance is not itself communicative, but only provides clues to the intentions of the speaker. A later part of Grice’s program spelled out how various maxims of cooperative behavior are exploited by speaker’s intentions in uttering certain words under particular circumstances.

Grice distinguished between what is said in making an utterance, that which determines the truth value of the contribution, and the total of what is communicated. Things that are communicated beyond what is said (in the technical sense) Grice called implicatures, and those implicatures are depend upon the assumption that the speaker is being cooperative he called conversational implicatures.

In our work we defined that Cooperative principles is a set of maxims of conversation and usually people follow them in order to make the communication clear. However, it is possible to flout a maxim intentionally or unconsciously and thereby convey a different meaning than what is literally spoken. Therefore, cooperation is still taking place, but no longer on the literal level. Conversationalists can assume that when speakers intentionally flout a maxim, they still do so with the aim of expressing some thought. Thus, the Gricean Maxims serve a purpose both when they are followed and when they are flouted.

 

References:

1.  Bach, Kent, "Conversational Impliciture." - Mind and Language -1994 - pp.124-162.

2.  Bach, Kent, "The myth of conventional implicature." Linguistics and Philosophy. - 1999 - pp.262-283.

3.  Bach, Kent, 2004, "Pragmatics and the Philosophy of Language." In Horn and Ward (eds.) – 2004 - pp. 463-87.

4.  Blakemore, Diane. Understanding Utterances. Oxford: Blackwell. – 1992.

5.  Carston, Robyn. "Implicature, explicature, and truth-conditional semantics." Reprinted in Kasher (ed.) 1998 - pp. 436-79.

6.  Chapman, Siobhan. Paul Grice, philosopher and linguist. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.-2005

7.  Grice, H. Paul, "Logic and conversation.", Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts, New York: Academic Press - 1975 - pp. 41-58.

8.  Grice, H. Paul "Further notes on logic and conversation." In P. Cole (ed.) – 1967.

9.  Grice, H. Paul "Utterer's Meaning and Intentions," Philosophical Review - 1969 - pp.147-177.

10.  Grice, H. Paul "Presupposition and Conversational Implicature." In P. Cole (ed.), Radical Pragmatics, New York: Academic Press - 1981- pp. 183-97.

11.  Horn, Laurence R. and Gregory Ward (eds.) The Hanbook of Pragmatics. Oxford: Blackwell. – 2004.

12.  Kempson, Ruth M. "Grammar and Conversational Principles." In F. Newmeyer (ed.) Linguistics: The Cambridge Survey, Vol. II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press – 1988 - pp. 139-163.

13.  Levinson, Stephen. Presumptive Meanings. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press/Bradford Books- 2000.

14.  Neale, Stephen "Paul Grice and the Philosophy of Language," Linguistics and Philosophy - 1992 – pp.509-559.

15.  Searle John "Indirect speech acts." ibid. Reprinted in Pragmatics: A Reader, ed. S. Davis, Oxford: Oxford University Press. -1991- pp. 265–277.

16.  Thomason, R. Accommodation, meaning, and implicature: Interdisciplinary foundations for pragmatics. In Intentions in Communication, ed. P. R. Cohen, J. L. Morgan & M. Pollack, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press -1990 - pp. 325–63.

17.  Van Kuppevelt, J. (1996) Inferring from topics: Scalar implicatures as topic dependent inferences. Linguistics and Philosophy – 1996 – pp. 393–443

18.  Wilson, D., and Sperber, D. On Grice's theory of conversation. In Conversation and Discourse, ed. P. Werth, New York: St. Martins Press -1981- pp. 155–78.

Internet references:

1.  www.appstate.edu/mcgowant/grice.htm

2.  www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_principle

3.  www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicature

4.  www.kwary.net

5.  www.ncs.ruhosting.nl/bart/talks/paris2010/lecture2.pdf

6.  www.sfu.ca/jeffpell/Cogs300/GriceLogicConvers75.pdf

7.  www.online.sfsu.edu/kbach/grice.htm

8.  www.plato.stanford.edu/entries/grice/