About H.P.

Grice:-

Herbert Paul Grice (March 13, 1913 August 28, 1988),

[1]
usually publishing under the name H. P. Grice, H. Paul Grice,
or Paul Grice, was a British philosopher of language, who spent
the final two decades of his career in the United States.
Grice's work on the nature of meaning has influenced the
philosophical study of semantics. His theory of implicature is
among the most important and influential contributions to
contemporary pragmatics.

RULES OF CONVERSATION:-

Imagine what would happen to language if there were no

rules to follow
during conversations.
Then it would be perfectly acceptable to follow "Hi, how
are you doing?"
with "cars are typically made from steel", or to simply lie
with every
statement you made. But then communication would be
virtually impossible.
It is clear that in normal conversation we don't simply say
whatever we

please, but instead follow some general guidelines as to

what is acceptable
and what isn't.
he question now is, what exactly are these rules?
One of the most basic assumptions we must make for
successful
communication to take place is that both people in a
conversation are
cooperating.
This is called the Cooperative Principle. (conceived
originally by the
philosopher H. P. Grice.)
Grice further identi_ed 4 groups of maxims (principles)
which people
implicitly obey when communicating. These are the
Conversational
Maxims.

Conversational Maxims:A. Maxims of Quality

1. Do not say what you believe to be false.
(i.e., \don't lie")
2. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
(i.e., "don't say things which you can't back up")
One of the main uses of the maxims, aside from describing how
communication generally takes place, is to signal the presence of
indirect
speech.

Flouting a Maxim:If one of the maxims is violated by some utterance, and

yet we are still

assuming that that person is cooperating with us in

communication, we
can take that violation as a sign that something is being
said indirectly.
This is called exploiting or flouting a maxim
(deliberately violating it).
(1) a. "That's great" (sarcastically) (A.1)
b. "Chicago's in Kansas isn't it, teacher?
Yes, and I suppose L.A.'s in Idaho as well." (A.1)

Conversational Maxims:B. Maxim of Relevance

1. Be relevant.
The most important maxim, since it is responsible for preventing
random,
incoherent conversations lacking any continuity such as the
example
above and in the book.
(2) a. "Is Gail dating anyone these days?
Well, she goes to Cleveland every weekend."
b. "Isn't Larry the biggest jerk you ever met?
Uh, it sure is nice for this time of year, eh?"
(Larry is in earshot of speaker A)

Conversational Maxims:C. Maxims of Quantity

1. Make your contribution as informative as is required.
(i.e., "Don't say too little")
2. Do not make your contribution more informative than is
required.
(i.e., "Don't say too much")
We usually assume that people are telling us everything we need
to know.

If they don't say something, then we assume they simply don't

know
that information.
(3) a. "John and Mary have 2 children.
Are they planning on having a third?
They already have a third child." C.1
b. "How did Harry fare in court the other day?
Oh, he got a _ne." (But Harry also got a death sentence) C.1

Conversational Maxims:D. Maxims of Manner

1. Avoid obscurity of expression.
2. Avoid ambiguity.
3. Be brief.
4. Be orderly.
These maxims relate to the form of speech you use. You shouldn't
use
words you know your listeners won't understand or say things
which you
know could be taken multiple ways. You should also not state
something
in a long, drawn-out way if you could say it in a much simpler
manner.
(4) a. "Miss Singer produced a series of sounds corresponding
closely
to the score of The Star-Spangled Banner"
"Miss Singer sang The Star-Spangled Banner" D.3
b. ?? John rode into the sunset and jumped on his horse" D.4

Conversational Maxims:Reasons for Maxims:

1. These maxims allow us to be more brief in communicating,
since we
don't need to say everything we would need to if we were being
perfectly

logical. (we don't say "John has 4 and only 4 children")

2.Also, they allow us to say things indirectly to avoid some of the
discomfort
which comes from saying unpleasant things directly.
3.They also allow us to insult/deride people indirectly without as
much
danger of confrontation.
4. They allow us to imply dissatisfaction/anger without putting us
in a
position where we will have to directly defend our views.