Gricean Maxims

Unit 5
Implicature
 Conventional Implicature
• Non-thruth conditional inference, which is not
deductive in any general, natural way from the
saying of what is said, but arises solely
because of the conventional features attached
to particular lexical items and/or linguistic
constructions
 Conventional Implicature
• p therefore q +>> q follows from p
He is a Chinese, he therefore uses chopsticks.

• p but q +>> p contrasts with q

John is poor, but he is honest.
Our sales have gone up, but theirs have gone
down.
 Conventional Implicature
• even p +>> contrary to expectations
Even his wife didn’t think that John would win the by-
election.

• p moreover q +>> q is in addition to p

Xiaoming can read German. Moreover, he can write
poems in the language.

• p so q +>> p provides an explanation for q

Mary is taking Chinese cookery lessons. So her
husband has bought her a grill.
 Conventional Implicature
• Conventional implicatures include but, even,
therefore, yet; actually, also, anyway, barely, besides,
however, manage to, on the other hand, only, still
though, too and yet.
 Generalized vs. Particularised
• generalized implicature  interpretation without any
particular context
Most of John’s friends believe in marriage.
+> not all of John’s friends believe in marriage
• particularized implicature  depends crucially on its
linguistic context
A: Where is Peter?
B: The light in his office is on.
+> He is in his office.
 Generalized vs. Particularised
Of the following two conversational implicatures, which
is the generalized one and which is the particularized
one?
A: How did yesterday’s guest lecture go?
B: Some of the faculty left before it ended.
+> Not all of the faculty left before it ended.
+> The lecture didn’t go well.
 Special forms of conversational
implicature
• metaphor - transfer of meaning
Queen Victoria is of iron.
 She has some identical properties like hardness,
resilience, non-flexibility or durability.
• irony - means the opposite of what is said
It’s raining cats and dogs.
Maria spilled her chocolate milk over the breakfast
table. Mother: That‘s great.
• tautology
War is war.
Business is business.
 Examples
• A and B are sisters. A is getting ready for a job
interview:
A: Did you get your velvet jacket back from
the cleaners?
B: You’re not borrowing it.
A: I don’t want to borrow it. I just wondered
if you got it back.
B: You just wondered!
A: Well, I haven’t got anything decent to wear!
 Examples
• A: Let’s have a drink.
B: It’s not one o’clock yet.
An hour or so later:
A: Let’s have a gin and tonic – it’s after one
o’clock.
B: I didn’t say that you could drink after one
o’clock. I said that you couldn’t drink
before.
 Gricean Pragmatics
Grice distinguishes between:
• What is said.
• What is implicated.

“Some of the boys came to the party.”

• said: At least two of the boys came to the party.
• implicated: Not all of the boys came to the party.

Both parts of what is communicated.

 Assumptions about Conversation

• Conversation is a cooperative effort. Each participant

recognises in their talk exchanges a common
purpose.
• Example: A stands in front of his obviously
immobilised car.
A: I am out of petrol.
B: There is a garage around the corner.
Joint purpose of B’s response: Solve A’s problem of
finding petrol for his car.
 The Cooperative Principle
Conversation is governed by a set of principles
which spell out how rational agents behave in
order to make language use efficient.
“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.” Grice
(1975:45)
 Cooperative principle
 Grice says that when we communicate we
assume, without realising it, that we, and the
people we are talking to, will be conversationally
cooperative - we will cooperate to achieve mutual
conversational ends.
 Grice proposed that many aspects of “speaker’s
meaning” result from the assumption that the
participants in a conversation are cooperating in
an attempt to reach mutual goals – or at least are
pretending to do so!
4 Maxims of the cooperative Principle
These ‘rules ‘ of conversation were first
formulated by the Paul Grice (1975) as the Co-
operative Principle. This states that we interpret
the language on the assumption that a speaker is
obeying the four maxims (known as Grice’s
Maxims) of:

• 1 QUALITY (BEING TRUE)

• 2 QUANTITY (BEING BRIEF)
• 3 RELATION (BEING RELEVANT)
• 4 MANNER (BEING CLEAR)
(1)The maxim of quality (“Tell the truth”)

Do not say what you believe to be false.

Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

(2) The maxim of quantity (“Say just as much as
is necessary”)

Make your contribution as informative as is required

for the current purposes of the exchange.
Do not make the contribution more informative than
is required.
.
(3) The maxim of relation / relevance (“Stick to
the point”)

Make your contributions relevant.

(4) The maxim of manner (“Be clear”)

Avoid obscurity.
Avoid ambiguity.
Be brief.
Be orderly.
Grice was not acting as a prescriptivist when he
stated these maxims.

He observed the difference between “what is

said” and “what is meant” to show that people
actually do follow these maxims in conversation
An example on the maxim of quantity:

Mum: Did you finish your homework?

Pat: I finished my algebra.
Mum: Well, get busy and finish your English, too!

The child did not say that her English homework is not done,
nor did she imply it.
Nevertheless her mother is entitled to draw this conclusion,
based on the combination of what the child actually said and
the cooperative principle.
An example on the maxim of relation/relevance:

The maxim of relevance is behind the implications of this

letter of recommendation (a classic type of example).
Dear Colleague,
Dr John Jones has asked me to write a letter on his behalf. Let
me say that Dr Jones is unfailingly polite, is neatly dressed at
all times, and is always on time for his classes.
Yours sincerely,
Prof. H.P. Smith
The person reading this letter assumes that all the relevant
information will be included; so the maxims of quantity and
relevance lead one to suspect that this is the best that the
professor can say.
Maxims may be:
Observed
Ex:
John got into Columbia and won a scholarship.
I went to the supermarket and I bought some sugar.

“and” means that both linked events occurred, but

implicates also temporal progression due to the
maxim of manner: be orderly.
Maxims may be:
Violated (because of a clash with another
maxim)

A: Where does Dave live?

B: Somewhere in the South of France
This response infringes the first maxim of quantity, but
does so in order to avoid violating the second maxim of
quality.
Maxims may be:
Flouted

E.g.:
A: Will you come out on a dinner date with me?
B: Hasn’t the weather been lovely recently?

B flouts the maxims of quantity and relevance.

 Flouting and pragmatic meaning

• Grice argues that when speakers appear not to follow

the maxims they expect hearers to appreciate implied
meanings. We call this flouting the maxims.

• Flouting means that the speaker implies a different

function from the literal meaning of the words used.
 Flouting quantity
• Flouting quantity involves giving either too
much or too little information.

• A Well, how do I look?

• B Your shoes are nice…
 Flouting quality
• Flouting quality can be done in a variety of ways; some
of the most common are?

• Exaggeration, e.g.
I’m starving, I could eat a horse
Hearers would be expected to know that the speaker to
infer that the speaker is very hungry.
• Metaphor e.g.:
My house is a refrigerator in winter,
Life is like a box of chocolate.
 Flouting quality
• irony (violates quality by saying the opposite of what
we mean, i.e. the words are the opposite of intended
meaning. Irony is often used in a friendly fashion,

• [sigh] You know, there’s nothing I love more than

waking at four in the morning to the celestial music of
next door’s little angel crying.
• The speaker here would expect the hearer to see this
as a humorous attempt to make the best out of an
uncomfortable or annoying situation.
 Flouting quality

• Sarcasm is a less friendly and frequently used

to make criticisms. It is normally obvious
because of the gap between what is said and
what is meant.

• Ah, undercooked potatoes again. Yummy!

 Flouting relation
• If speakers flout the maxim of relation, the
expect hearers to infer or imagine what the
utterance did not say.
A: So what do you think of Mark?
B: His flatmate’s a wonderful cook.
• In this case, the speaker, by not mentioning
Mark in the reply, and hence by being
irrelevant, she implies that she didn’t think
very much of him.
 Flouting manner
• Flouting manner, this very frequently takes
the form of obscurity or ambiguity; quite
often it can be used to exclude another
interactant.
A Where are you off to?
B I was thinking of going to get some of that
funny white stuff for someone.
A Ok, but don’t be long – dinner’s nearly
ready.
 Violating maxims
• Unlike flouting, violating maxims means that
the speaker knows that the hearer will not
recover the implicature and will only see the
surface truth. In other words the hearer will
take the words at face value and act
accordingly.
 quantity
• Violating the maxim of quantity means
deliberately providing insufficient information so
that the hearer will not fully understand the
situation. Example from the Pink Panther

A Does your dog bite

B No
A (Bends down to stroke dog and is bitten ) Ow!
But you said it doesn’t bite.
B It’s not my dog.
 Violating quality
• Violating the maxim of quality (and therefore being insincere or
lying) needs little explanation. It is quite permissible and acceptable
in some contexts and cultures, especially a lie that protects or a
white lie, the kind that are told to children.

• Imagine a husband asks his wife the following question:

How much did that new dress cost?

• She might answer, I know, why don’t we eat out for a change? in
order to change the subject, in which she would be deliberately
violating the maxim of relation. If, on the other hand, she answered
‘A tiny fraction of my salary, though most probably a very high
fraction of the salary of the shop assistant who sold it to me”, she
would be violating the maxim of manner, avoiding clarity and being
deliberately obscure.
 Hedging Maxims
A hedge is a mitigating word or sound used to lessen
the impact of an utterance.

Typically, they are adjectives or adverbs, but can also

consist of clauses. It could be regarded as a form of
euphemism.
Examples:
1.There might just be a few insignificant
problems we need to address. (adjective)
2.The party was somewhat spoiled by the return
of the parents. (adverb)
3.I'm not an expert but you might want to try
restarting your computer. (clause)