In What Ways Do Paul Grice's Maxims of Conversation Help in Our Understanding of Pragmatic Meanings?
In What Ways Do Paul Grice's Maxims of Conversation Help in Our Understanding of Pragmatic Meanings?
In What Ways Do Paul Grice's Maxims of Conversation Help in Our Understanding of Pragmatic Meanings?
1155029579
Prof. Nelson
ENGE 2820
Semantics & Pragmatics
Final Essay
9 December 2014
In what ways do Paul Grices Maxims of Conversation help in our understanding of
pragmatic meanings?
The study of meaning splits into semantics and pragmatics. The most common way of
defining these two fields is that: semantics is the literal meaning independent of context while
pragmatics is the meaning in context, which can be illustrated as What does X mean? is
what semantics is about and What did you mean by X? is what pragmatics is about (Leech,
1983). In order to foster communication between human beings, we strive to be co-operative
and further conversational goals. Despite the fact that we ought to abide by rules, one of the
most common set is known as Paul Grices Maxims of Conversation, and be a co-operative
user of language, in natural language, what is occurring every day is not the case. Hence, in
daily conversation, semantics is definitely not enough to explain meaning required between
interlocutors to comprehend each other and hence pragmatic meaning is essential at any time
and place. This leads to the argument that pragmatic meaning is inferred when we break one
or more of the maxims. This essay will first explain the maxims and how they can be broken
then discuss how breaking them can achieve pragmatic meaning.
In 1967, the philosopher H.P. Grice proposed that more could be conveyed than was said
if one assumed that in conversing, human begins follow a behavioral dictum, which he called
the Coopeartive Principle (CP) (Green, 1996). The Cooperative Principle is to 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).
The CP consists of four maxims, each of which covers one aspect of linguistic interaction
and describes what is expected of a cooperative speaker with respect to that maxim (Birner
2013). Birner roughly paraphrase the four maxims:
1. The Maxim of Quantity: Say enough, but dont say too much.
2. The Maxim of Quality: Say only what you have reason to believe is true.
3. The Maxim of Relation: Say only what is relevant.
4. The Maxim of Manner: Be brief, clear, and unambiguous.
Interlocutors are expected to converse in a maximally efficient, rational and cooperative
way by observing these maxims (Marmaridou, 2000). Yet, we human beings always break
these maxims of conversation.
In order to achieve pragmatic meaning, we make an utterance with a certain goal by
breaking one or more than one of the maxims, and more precisely, flouting or opting out the
maxims. Note that violating the maxims only refer to failing to observe it inconspicuously
without the hearer realizing that the maxim is being violated. One goal of doing so may be to
quietly and un-ostentatiously mislead the hearer by telling a lie (Marmaridou, 2000). Hence
violating a maxim will not be covered in this essay due to the fact there will be no pragmatic
meaning received by the hearer. In contrast, by flouting a maxim, it is intentional and the
hearer is expected to be aware of the violation and by opting out a maxim, is refusing to play
the game at all (Briner, 2013). Hence, in this essay, how flouting maxims can help infer
pragmatic meanings will be discussed maxim by maxim.
For the Maxim of Quantity, it has two parts and both can be flouted to achieve pragmatic
meaning. The first part is to make your contribution as informative as is required for the
current purposes of the exchange in which you are engaged (Cruse 2010). Flouting this part
of the maxim allows the speaker or writer to implicate what they prefer not to state explicitly.
For example, if A asks B whereve do you live? and B replies, somewhere, B flouts the
maxim of quantity by providing too little information (Green, 1996). Normally, in this
circumstance, A will be aware of the fact that B does not want to reveal his or her residence
for whatever reason. The pragmatic meaning of the answer is inferred by breaking the
maxim. Another example is when a teacher writes a recommendation for a student saying
only that she has excellent penmanship and was always on time for class (Birner 2013).
The maxim is also broken here because no enough has been said for a reference letter. It will
then appear clear to the employer that if the candidate had more to be bragged about, the
teacher would have written about it. This way, the teacher expresses what he or she prefers
not to state explicitly. The second part of the maxim is flouted by saying more than is
necessary and pragmatic meaning can be inferred by blurring the focus shifted. For instance,
when one asks you what type of phone you are using and you reply, the latest apple model,
128GB, 5.5 Retina HD display, 5.5-inch LED-backlit widescreen Multi-Touch instead of
just saying iPhone 6 Plus, your pragmatic meaning would probably be showing off and
demonstrating the fact that you are an expert in phones. Therefore, we can see that the Maxim
of Quantity can be flouted to either implicate what they prefer not to state explicitly by saying
too little or shifting the focus by saying too much.
For the Maxim of Quality, it is concerned with truth-telling and the two parts of this
maxim are first, do not say what you believe to be false and second, do not make unsupported
statements (Cruse, 2010). The first part of the maxim is the focus for arising pragmatic
meaning. When we use non-literal language, such as idioms and metaphors, we are actually
making utterances that are utterly untrue and obviously contrary to any common sense. One
example is in the musical Les Miserables, the student leader Enjolras said it was easy to
swat [the enemy] like flies. He was definitely not going to hit the national guards with a
swatter instead of a gun like swatting flies. The metaphor here is trying to describe the enemy
as flies but in fact they were not. So the maxim of quality is flouted here to give rise the
pragmatic meaning of describing the easiness. There are many more fixed expressions in
English that require the maxim to be broken to achieve pragmatic meaning. The idiom the
quiz was a piece of cake is false in literal meaning because the content of the quiz was not
eating a cake nor was the quiz paper a piece of cake. Therefore, we can see that he literal
meaning of all these idioms and metaphors are untrue, hence breaking the maxim of quality
and providing pragmatic meaning to hearers.
The Maxim of Relation is comparatively very simple. It is to be relevant. Usually,
flouting this maxim is to sound grossly uncooperative and hence expressing a need to
change the topic (Briner 2013). An everyday example would be replying the weather is nice
today and similarly as raised by Grice as the weather has been quite delight delightful this
summer, hasnt it? The implicatures here is to show that the original topic was to be changed
to avoid embarrassment by flouting the maxim of relation. Another pragmatic meaning that
can be achieved by flouting the maxim of relation is to imply no more relevant information
can be said. Going back to example of the recommendation letter, the maxim of relation is in
fact at the same time flouted if the teacher continues writing about the students achievements
in volleyball and music as these information is irrelevant but the pragmatic inferred by the
employer would probably that the candidate has nothing relevant to be written about. Thus,
the maxim of relation is sometimes broken to change the topic and show that theres nothing
relevant to be said.
The Maxim of Manner has four components, first, to avoid obscurity, second, to avoid
ambiguity, third to avoid unnecessary prolixity and forth to be orderly (Cruse, 2010). The first
part of the maxim can be flouted to keep information from someone. A simple example would
be parents spelling the whole word B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y to keep the topic from small children
who cant spell the word. The second part of the maxim is flouted for either literary or
humorous effects, for example in a pun (Birner 2013). In a pun example, the helpers of
Santa are known as subordinate clauses, the predicate subordinate clauses is ambiguous as
in it can be the grammar term or meaning lower level Santa Clauses. The third part of the
maxim can be flouted to show that the speaker is unwilling to say something
straightforwardly. For example, if a boyfriend is being asked by his girlfriend if the skirt is
pretty, in order to safe-guard their relationship, he would flout the maxim of being brief and
instead of saying no, its ugly, he will say the colors are certainly bright, and youve
always looked good in bright colours, but then again its awfully sunny outside and might call
for something more muted. The maxim of being brief is flouted here to achieve pragmatic
meaning. The forth part of the maxim is rarely flouted to give rise to pragmatic meaning
though.
To conclude, it can be observed in everyday conversation, Grices Maxims of
Conversations are made to be broken in order to help in our understanding of pragmatic
meanings. Some may argue that the maxims are indeed observed at some deeper level,
speakers nonetheless break them on the surface level so as to initiate hearers to think deeper
to get the implied meaning.
References
Birner, B. J. (2013). Introduction to Pragmatics (pp. 1-76). N.p.: Wiley Blackwell.
Cruse, A. (2010). Meaning in Language An Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics (3rd
ed., pp. 363-373). N.p.: Oxford University Press.
Green, G. M. (1996). Pragmatics and Natural Language Understanding (2nd ed., pp. 89104). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Grice, P. H. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and
semantics, Vol. 3: Speech Acts (pp. 41-58). New York: Academic Press.
Leech, G. (1983). Principles of Pragmatics (pp. 1-100). Essex: Pearson Education Limited.
Marmaridou, S. S. (n.d.). Pragmatic Meaning and Cognition (pp. 223-236). N.p.: John
Benjamins Publishing Co.