Grice’s Cooperative Principle: Maxims and Implications

Posted on Jan 14, 2025 in English, Linguistic and Literary Studies

Grice’s Cooperative Principle

Grice, a philosopher, authored a highly influential article in pragmatics. Unlike many of his contemporaries in the 1940s-50s who focused on logic, Grice believed communication was more complex than logic alone.

Grice’s Main Contributions to Pragmatics

  • Intentionality: Speakers have intentions, and listeners must identify them.
  • Communication: A cooperative task between participants.

Grice in “Logic and Conversation” (1975)

Grice’s Cooperative Principle:

“Make your conversational 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”. To be cooperative, people have to follow a number of MAXIMS. We expect speakers to intend to communicate something to us.

1. Maxim of Quality (Truth)

  • Do not say what you believe to be false.
  • Do not say that of which you lack adequate evidence.
  • Lying implies a reason for it.

2. Maxim of Quantity (Information)

  • Make your contribution as informative as required.
  • Do not make your contribution more informative than required.
  • Provide necessary information (not more, not less).
  • Lack of information implies something.

3. Maxim of Relation (Relevance)

  • Be relevant.
  • If not relevant, there must be a reason.

4. Maxim of Manner (Clarity)

  • Avoid obscurity of expression.
  • Avoid ambiguity.
  • Be brief.
  • Be orderly.
  • If not followed, there must be a reason: extra meaning.

Grice (1975) (Cooperative principle)

Mutually Accepted Goal:

Participants work to fulfill the conversation’s goal. This was criticized by some (Kasher, 1976) who proposed the Principle of Rationality.

Personal Goal:

Each participant has their own goal to achieve through the conversation.

Why no Maxim of Politeness?

Geoffrey Leech (Principles of Pragmatics, 1983) proposed a Principle of Politeness, which he considered more important than cooperation. Leech’s maxims include: 1. tact, 2. generosity, 3. approbation, 4. modesty, 5. agreement, 6. sympathy. Communication is a balance between cooperation, politeness, and personal goals.

Ways Maxims May Not Be Followed:

  1. Infringing a Maxim: Failure due to imperfect linguistic performance.
  2. Opting out: Unwillingness to cooperate due to legal or ethical reasons.
  3. Flouting a maxim: Intention to communicate despite apparent lack of cooperation (generates implicatures).
  4. Violating a maxim: Intention not to cooperate.
Flouting a Maxim

The speaker is supposed to be cooperative -> The speaker flouts one of Grice’s Maxims -> If the speaker is cooperating there must be a reason for flouting it -> Surely the speaker intends to communicate some information which is NOT in the context of the utterance -> Using context the hearer will grasp the additional information -> An implicature is reached which is not in the context of the utterance. The contextual information that we need to get the implicature is called pragmatic presupposition.