The Application of Grice Maxims in Conversation: A Pragmatic Study

Received: August 17, 2021 Accepted: September 22, 2021 Volume: 3 Issue: 10 DOI: 10.32996/jeltal.2021.3.10.4 In every individual’s life, communicating and interacting with others is vital for carrying out a healthy social and professional relationship. Strictly speaking, we, you and I communicate with one another in our day-to-day life and simply understand each other. Paul Grice’s has presented his cooperative principle theory to explain our day-to-day life conversation. This article aims to review the basic Grecian theory of conversational implicature, identifying important consequences, known problems, and useful extensions or modifications. This paper is about how people should consider meeting the cooperative principle in order to perform successfully in communication which is based mainly on Paul Grice’s theory of implicature which is considered one of the most important contributions to pragmatics. KEYWORDS


Introduction 1
In pragmatics, the major aim of communication is considered the exchange of information. People usually cooperate to convey their intentions and implicit import of their utterances. Therefore, all things being equal, conversations are cooperative attempts based on common ground and pausing a shared purpose.
Grice's work on the cooperative principle led to the development of 'pragmatics' as a separate discipline within linguistics.
Consider the following, taken from Fais (1994) "One of the defining features of conversation is that it is cooperative in nature." (Fais, 1994:231-242) The distinction between what is said and what is meant was Austin's core idea of his early theory in pragmatics. Later on, Grice, who is mainly Austin's student has made an attempt to go further. That is, to systematize how a hearer gets from what is said to what is meant, from expressed meaning to implied meaning. Paul Grice, a British philosopher of language, formulated what is now called the cooperative principle. "Make your conversation contribution 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 ' (1975, 45).
In his William James lectures at Harvard Oxford universities in 1967, Grice explicates the cooperative principle and he pays attention to limit the use of it for describing talk exchanges presenting the following features. " The participants have some common immediate aim, the contributions of the participants are dovetailed mutually dependent; there is some sort of understanding that other things being equal, the transaction should continue inappropriate style unless both parties are agreeable that it should terminate." (Grice, 1989; 31) Grice (1975) tries to prove the operation of logic in the performance of these aspects of conversations to challenge this viewpoint. To him, implicatures are used as an instrument to investigate and signal the philosophical usefulness of implicatures and indicate that we can explain structures that ignore the understanding of formal logic systematically.

Cooperative principle and Maxim
In order to examine the CP, We will first outline the basic concepts briefly behind the CP and maxims. Previous work by Austin (1962) and Searle (1969) was largely concerned with the relationship between direct and indirect speech acts. Any number of indirect speech acts can, infact convey a particular meaning. Grice is concerned with this distinction between saying and meaning.
Grice first introduces the cooperative principle and explains conversational implicature in his article, "Logic and Conversation." (1975). He argued that the generation and perception of these implicatures were based on the following cooperative principle: 'Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which is occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged'. (Grice, 1975;p. 48) The cooperative principle attempts to make explicit certain rational principles observed by people when they converse.
Grice claims that human beings communicate with each other logically and rationally, and cooperation is embedded into people's conversations.
Furthermore, he argues that this habit will never be lost because it has been learned during childhood.
In his theory, Grice makes a distinction between saying and meaning. He argues that speakers can create implicit meanings and their audiences can infer these intended meanings from their conversations. He believes that people follow specific patterns in their interactions and claims that listeners generally assume that a speaker's utterance contains enough relevant information. When it patently violates this assumption, we understand that meaning. Therefore, violation of relevance does not mean a lack of cooperation.
The maxims that Grice's (1975) discuss are as follows: Quantity: Make your contribution as informative as is required. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.

Quality:
Do not say what you believe to be false. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence. He suggests that there is an accepted way of speaking which we all accept as standard behavior.
When we produce or hear an utterance, we assume that it will generally be true, have the right amount of information, be relevant, and be couched in understandable terms.
There is a relationship between the conventional meaning of an utterance and any implicit meaning it might have, and it is calculable. What Grice (1975) does not say is that interaction is 'cooperative' in the sense which is found in the dictionary.

Ways of failing to observe a maxim
People fail to observe the maxims of cooperation, whether deliberately or accidentally. There are five main ways of failing to observe a maxim.

Suspending
The ways of failing to observe a maxim are given below:

Flouting of maxim
The infringement of maxims, which involves exploitation, that is, a procedure by which a maxim is flouted to get a conversational implicatures, is usually carried out through indirect, contradictory utterances, understatement tautology and hyperbole. Maxim of quantity and its implicature occur when the speaker or the writer conveys messages that are not as informative as they are required or the information is too much and unnecessary.
'B' flouts the maxim of quantity, since he gives too much information to A, while too much information to A, can distract the listener.

Flouting maxim of quality
A: What is the capital of Indonasia? B: I believe it's Bogor, or may be Jakarta.
Maxim of quality and its implicature occur when your contribution is untrue or lack evidence. 'B' flouts the maxim of quality since he gives the insincere answer for 'A' question.

Flouting maxim of relevance
Mom: Have you done your homework?
Son: My bicycle is broken mom.
Maxim of relevance and implicature arise when the speaker deviates from the topic being asked and discussed. The answer of the son is not answering the mother's question. The son tries to direct his mother's concern away from the question which he does not like.

Flouting maxim of manner
It's the taste.
Maxims of manner and its implicature occur when the utterances are not brief, ambiguous and obscure. Advertisements often flout the maxim of manner. The statement flouts maxims of manner because it is obscure.

Violation of maxim
Violation is defined as the unostentatious or 'quite' non-observance of a maxim. A speaker who violates a maxim 'will be liable to mislead' (Grice, 1975;49) Violating a maxim is the opposite of flouting a maxim. Violating a maxim prevents or discourages the hearer from seeking implicatures and encourages their taking utterances at face value.
When violating the maxim of quantity, the speaker does not provide the hearer with sufficient information. As for the maxim of quality, the speaker is not honest and provides wrong information. When violating the maxim of manner, he/she may say everything except what the hearer desires to cognize. Concerning the last maxim of relation, here, one can observe that the speaker endeavours to change the discussion subjects or to deflect the hearer. The girl (who was her boyfriend at the cinema) violates the maxim of quality as he lies to his father for some reason.

Infringing the maxims
Maxim's infringement occurs when a speaker fails to observe the maxim, although he/she has no intention of generating an implicature or deceiving.
Usually, infringing results from defective linguistic performance or impaired linguistic performance brought by emotions and states, such as excitement, nervousness etc.

Example:
Japanese customer: Do you have lice?
The Japanese often pronounce 'r' as 'I' so he says 'lice' instead of 'rice', thus infringing the maxim and causing misunderstandings.

Opting out of the maxims
A speaker opts out of observing a maxim whenever he/she indicates an unwillingness to cooperate as the maxim requires.

Example:
Reporter: What can you tell us about the state of Mr. Hastings? Doctor: I'm sorry. Such information is confidential.
The doctor deliberately fails to observe the maxim as he refuses to give the information required due to the doctor patient confidentially.

Suspending the maxims
Under certain circumstances, there is no exception on any participant that one or several maxims should be observed.
For instance, in the case of communication via e-mail, notes, the quantity maxim is suspended because such means are of functional owing to their very brevity.

Limitations of the cooperative principle
The first issue is the different cultures, countries and communities, each having its own way of observing and expressing maxims.
For instance, if you are in Britain and you say: 'We will see.... anyway..... I will give you a call tomorrow.' and you don't call at all, it's considered a violation of the maxim of quality, whereas in other countries, this is a normal way of flouting by implying 'I am not quite interested.' Another problem represents the overlap that often appears between the maxims.
It can be difficult to identify which maxim acts because sometimes there are two or more operating simultaneously.

The role of the maxims in the interpretations of figurative utterances.
Grice claims that irony, metaphor, meiosis and hyperbole can all be analysed in terms of conversational implicatures.
According to Grice, the hearer concludes that the speaker must have been attempting to get across some closely related proposition which does not violate the maxim of truthfulness; in the case of irony, for example, it might be contradictory of the proposition uttered and in the case of metaphor it might be a comparison so that a metaphor is reinterpreted as implicating a simile.
In most of the examples of conversational implicatures that Grice discusses, the speaker of an utterance intends to convey both what is conversationally implicated and what is actually said. In the case of metaphor, irony and so on, the speaker intends to convey only what is conversationally implicated. This analysis seems to us to involve an unjustified extension of the notion of a conversational implicature. The basic rationale behind the notion of conversational implicature is that the hearer posits the existence of an implicature in order to preserve his assumption that the conversational maxims have been observed on the level of what is said. In the case of metaphor, irony and so on, the fact that an implicature has to be substituted for what was literally said ought to confirm the hearer's suspicion that the maxims have been violated, rather than preserving his assumption that they have been obeyed.
In other words, the implicatures carried by irony, metaphor etc. do not seem to be at all of the same type as more standard implicatures; they do not satisfy the same basic definition, and they must be worked out according to rather different principles.
The connection between Grice's conception of irony and metaphor and the traditional rhetorical view that certain utterances have 'figurative' instead of 'literal' meaning should be obvious. In both cases, the interpretation of an utterance is claimed to involve substituting one type of conveyed meaning for another in both cases, the relations between 'literal' and 'figurative' meaning, and the rationale for substituting one for the other remain unclear.

Comments on Grice theory
In his article, Ladegaard (2008) suggests that both the semantic and the pragmatic sides of human interaction as well as all the linguistic awareness necessary for the perception and interpretation of meaning in any communicative behavior should be covered in any theory of conversational cooperation.
He argues that Grice only considers the semantic aspect of an utterance and then clarifies it based on pragmatics or context which help us to interpret the speaker's intentions.
Grice's theory is flawed. First, it is too biased towards cooperation. Grice's believes that people aim at communicating successfully and effectively and in trying to solve their problems.
Grice's cooperative principle has played a historically significant role in pragmatics because this theory separated pragmatics from linguistics. There seems to be a misinterpretation between the everyday notion of 'cooperation', and Grice's technical term. Thomas (1998b: p.176) argues that proponents of Grice's theory have neglected to explore the ambiguous term 'cooperation' and have not explained how they interpreted and used this concept in their own works. Thomas (1998a) criticizes Grice's theory for three misinterpretations which are as follows: 'Viewing human nature optimistically, proposing a series of rules for effective conversation and believing that his suggested maxims would always be taken into considerations. Thomas (1998aThomas ( , 1998b claims that although Grice's theory is not satisfactory and suffers from many holes, nothing better has been found to replace it. Thus many researchers have questioned or rejected the university as well as the feasibility of Grice's cooperative principle. Grice's theory is too biased towards the notion of cooperation in human conversation. But he cannot answer questions about what would happen in situations where human beings prefer employing non-cooperative strategies; or how the cooperative principle accounts for miscommunication.

Neo Griceans: (Martinich, Levinson, Geoffrey Leech)
Martinich suggests, instead, a maxim that is 'broad enough to cover the entire spectrum of speech acts' (Martinich 1980, 219). He settles on his authenticity supermaxim B: B. Be authentic. That is not knowingly participating in a speech act for which the conditions for its successful and non-defective performance are not satisfied. (Martinich 1980, 220) It seems that most speech acts at least the ones that Martinich lists, such as promising, forgiving, and apologizing, all entail nonnatural meanings. Grice clearly had this in mind when he proposed his maxims, so this dramatic change may be unnecessary to the theory.
The second maxim that Martinich modifies is the maxim of relation. He divides this maxim into two submaxims, unlike his modification to the QL-maxim. He calls the first of these two submaxims C1, which is 'make your contribution one that moves the discussion towards its goal.' (Martinich 1980, 220) This modification does address two of the major criticism levied against Grice.
Martinich refers to the second of the two submaxims of relation as C2. This maxim is as follows: 'Express yourself in terms that will allow your hearer to tie your contribution into the conversational context'. (Martinich, 1980, 221).
This brings light to another alternative to Grecian theory, which is that of Relevance theory.
Continuing with the modification of Neo-Griceans theory, one must mention the theory presented in Levinson's presumptive meanings: The Theory of Generalized Conversational Implicature. It concerns itself with general conversational implicatures (GCIs) rather than particularized Conversational Implicatures.
Thus, Levinson's theory of pragmatics is intentionally incomplete, as he points out when he writes, 'a theory of GCIs has to be supplemented with a theory of PCIs that will have at least as much, and possibly considerably more importance to a general theory of communication.' (Levinson, 2000, 22).
One of the problems Levinson sees in the Griceans theory is that there is no major distinction between generalized and particular implicatures.
However, Levinson claims that Grice was particularly interested in these generalized implicatures; thus, the GCI theory Levinson creates would be of great interest to philosophers with similar interests to Grice's.