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Gricean Maxims of Conversation
Not all of the connected text that people have to process occurs
in written form. We canthink of ordinary conversations as examples
of spoken connected text. Conversations are
interesting to study because they occur so frequently and
because (unlike written texts)they normally involve the production
of a great deal of language with little time for planning
and revision.
We've already seen a number of examples of linguistic rules that
people follow in producingor comprehending language. Some of these
have to do with ways of combining sounds to
produce words, combining words to produce sentences, or even
combining ideas to producemeanings. Many researchers believe,
however, that yet another set of rules is necessary for
people to use language appropriately or effectively, especially
in conversations: pragmaticrules.
Here we will examine some pragmatic rules specific to
conversations called the Griceanmaxims of cooperative conversation
(Grice, 1975).
Grice believed that for people to converse, each must do more
than produce utterances thatare phonologically, syntactically, and
semantically appropriate. Consider the following"conversation":
SPEAKER A: I just heard that Joe got promoted today. Isn't that
great?
SPEAKER B: Salt Lake City is located in Utah.SPEAKER C: No,
Charles Darwin is the father of modern evolutionary theory.
SPEAKER A: What's the square root of 34?SPEAKER B: Chocolate ice
cream is sweet.
What is wrong with this conversation? Notice that all of the
sentences that the speakershave produced are "legal," and at
several levels. Each obeys the phonological rules of
English. Each is syntactically well formed. Each is meaningful.
Yet all together, they don'tadd up to a conversation. In part, what
is going on is a lack of connection between anything
one speaker says and anything else another speaker says.
Normally in conversation, each ofa person's contributions or
utterances bears some relationship to what others have already
said or to what the speaker plans to say later. In this sense,
speakers could be said to beproviding a context for one another's
contributions.
Grice (1975) argued that for a conversation to take place, all
the speakers have to
cooperate with one another. Although speakers in a conversation
have many choices to
make concerning what they will say, as well as when and how they
will say it, there are stillconstraints, or general rules, that
they must obey (Miller & Glucksberg, 1988). Grice
described speakers in a conversation as all following a general
"cooperative principle."
Speakers do this, Grice believed, by following four specific
conversational maxims or rules
(Grice, 1975):
1. Maxims of quantity. Make your contribution as informative as
required. Do not make
your contribution more informative than is required.2. Maxims of
quality. Try to make your contribution one that is true. Do not say
what
you believe to be false. Do not say that for which you have no
evidence.
3. Maxim of relation. Be relevant.
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4. Maxims of manner. Be clear. Avoid obscurity of expression.
Avoid ambiguity. Bebrief. Be orderly.
Violations of the maxims produce conversations that are
noticeably odd. For instance, if
someone asks, "Do you have a watch?" and you respond, "Yes, I
do," you are violating thefirst maxim of quantity: You are being
less informative than is required. Your conversation
partner is not, in all likelihood, taking a census for Timex or
Rolex; he or she probablywants to know the time. As a member of the
language community that you live in, you areexpected to know that
the question asked is really a request for the time and to
respond
appropriately.
It is also possible to violate the first maxim by being too
informative. For example, some of
my students occasionally invite me to eat with them in the
campus dining halls. When wearrange a luncheon date, they often ask
something like "Where should we meet?" My
response ought to be something on the order of "How about if you
come to my office?"rather than something much more detailed like
"Please come to my office door, and I will be
standing 27 centimeters inside of it." The latter is bizarre,
presumably by virtue of beingoverly specific.
The second maxim has to do with truthfulness. Generally,
conversation partners assumethat the other is telling the truth, or
at least what the speaker believes to be the truth. On
some occasions, it is permissible to violate this maxim-for
example, to be ironic. Imagine
that a friend who's missed a lecture in a class in which you are
both enrolled asks, "Howwas class today?" You can respond, "Utterly
fascinating!" even if it really was dry as toast, if
you somehow signal that your answer isn't to be taken literally.
Rolled eyes, exaggeratedintonation, winks, and the like help to
communicate that your violation of the maxim of
quality is itself meant to communicate something-in this case,
ironic humor. If you simply
utter an untruthful response without letting your listener know
that you aren't being candid,then your conversation will not be
successful, and your conversation partner could
legitimately complain about your conversation skills.
Someone who consistently violates the maxims of quantity or
quality may well be perceived
as uncooperative or obnoxious and, after a while, may find it
difficult to attract conversationpartners. Someone who consistently
violates the third maxim of relation by responding with
irrelevant utterances will have a bigger problem: He or she will
simply be regarded as, atbest, very bizarre. To illustrate, imagine
a conversation between Tom and Joe, two college
roommates:
TOM (looking around): Hey, Joe, have you seen my sweater?
JOE (looking at Tom, and smiling): Lo, a flaming squirrel!
If Joe persists in violating the maxim of relation, he will
likely find himself at a complete loss
for conversation partners, if not roommates and friends.
The fourth maxim, the maxim of manner, generally governs the way
you choose to
construct your conversation contributions. The general idea is
that you should speak asclearly as possible, using language
appropriate to your listener and the context. Among
other things, this maxim forbids you to answer your professors
in pig Latin or your youngersiblings in "academese." It also
prevents you from holding a filibuster (unless you are a
congressperson) and requires that you at least try to organize
what you say before youbegin speaking.
