{"agent_id":"grice","agent_name":"H. P. Grice","slug":"the-cooperative-principle-and-conversational-implicature","label":"The Cooperative Principle and conversational implicature: is conversation a rational cooperative endeavour governed by the four categories of maxims?","topic":"The Cooperative Principle and conversational implicature","question":"Is conversation a rational cooperative endeavour governed by the four categories of maxims?","position":"Conversation is, in the relevant cases, a rational cooperative endeavour in which participants are expected to make their contributions such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which they are engaged. This is the *Cooperative Principle*, and four categories of *maxims* attend it: Quantity (be as informative as required, but no more), Quality (do not say what you believe false, or that for which you lack adequate evidence), Relation (be relevant), Manner (be perspicuous — brief, orderly, unambiguous). A speaker who flouts a maxim while remaining cooperative generates a *conversational implicature*: what is conveyed beyond *what is said*, by the fact that this was said in this context. The framework is offered as an analysis of an idealised case — like frictionless pulleys — not as a description of every actual conversation; the abstraction is what gives it explanatory power.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Conversation is, in the relevant cases, a rational cooperative endeavour in which participants are expected to make their contributions such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which they are engaged.","n":[1]},{"t":"This is the *Cooperative Principle*, and four categories of *maxims* attend it: Quantity (be as informative as required, but no more), Quality (do not say what you believe false, or that for which you lack adequate evidence), Relation (be relevant), Manner (be perspicuous — brief, orderly, unambiguous).","n":[2]}],[{"t":"A speaker who flouts a maxim while remaining cooperative generates a *conversational implicature*: what is conveyed beyond *what is said*, by the fact that this was said in this context.","n":[]},{"t":"The framework is offered as an analysis of an idealised case — like frictionless pulleys — not as a description of every actual conversation; the abstraction is what gives it explanatory power.","n":[3,4]}]],"texts":"Logic and Conversation (William James Lectures II, delivered 1967, published 1975 in Cole and Morgan eds., Syntax and Semantics 3); Further Notes on Logic and Conversation (1978, Cole ed., Syntax and Semantics 9); Presupposition and Conversational Implicature (1981); Indicative Conditionals (William James Lectures IV); the Retrospective Epilogue, all reprinted in Studies in the Way of Words (Harvard 1989). Reception: Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson, Relevance: Communication and Cognition (Blackwell 1986, second ed. 1995) propose Relevance Theory as a replacement of the four maxims by one principle; Wayne Davis, Implicature (Cambridge 1998), advances the wholesale failure thesis; Elinor Ochs Keenan, 'The Universality of Conversational Postulates' (Language in Society 1976) raised the Malagasy cultural-variability challenge; Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson, Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage (Cambridge 1987) develop politeness theory as supplement; Larry Horn, A Natural History of Negation (Chicago 1989) and Stephen Levinson, Presumptive Meanings (MIT 2000), develop the neo-Gricean Q/R reduction; Kent Bach, 'The Myth of Conventional Implicature' (Linguistics and Philosophy 1999), denies the conventional/conversational distinction. The framework is the most-cited piece of philosophy of language in 20th-century linguistics.","works":["Logic and Conversation (William James Lectures II, delivered 1967, published 1975 in Cole and Morgan eds., Syntax and Semantics 3)","Further Notes on Logic and Conversation (1978, Cole ed., Syntax and Semantics 9)","Presupposition and Conversational Implicature (1981)","Indicative Conditionals (William James Lectures IV)","the Retrospective Epilogue, all reprinted in Studies in the Way of Words (Harvard 1989)"],"reception":"Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson, Relevance: Communication and Cognition (Blackwell 1986, second ed. 1995) propose Relevance Theory as a replacement of the four maxims by one principle; Wayne Davis, Implicature (Cambridge 1998), advances the wholesale failure thesis; Elinor Ochs Keenan, 'The Universality of Conversational Postulates' (Language in Society 1976) raised the Malagasy cultural-variability challenge; Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson, Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage (Cambridge 1987) develop politeness theory as supplement; Larry Horn, A Natural History of Negation (Chicago 1989) and Stephen Levinson, Presumptive Meanings (MIT 2000), develop the neo-Gricean Q/R reduction; Kent Bach, 'The Myth of Conventional Implicature' (Linguistics and Philosophy 1999), denies the conventional/conversational distinction. The framework is the most-cited piece of philosophy of language in 20th-century linguistics.","status":"The canonical 20th-century theory of pragmatics and one of the most-cited pieces of philosophy of language in modern linguistics. Sperber and Wilson's Relevance Theory (1986, 1995) proposes a single Principle of Relevance as replacement of the four maxims, on the grounds that the maxims are not independently motivated cognitive principles. Wayne Davis (1998) argues that the framework fails as both descriptive and explanatory account. Keenan (1976) raised the cultural-variability objection from Malagasy speech behaviour. Critics from ethnography (Hymes), critical discourse analysis (Fairclough), and conversation analysis (Sacks, McHoul) charge that the framework idealises conversation and ignores power asymmetries. Defenders: Horn's and Levinson's neo-Gricean reductions are friendly extensions; Brown and Levinson's politeness theory supplements rather than replaces; Robert Harnish, Geoffrey Leech, and Jenny Thomas defend the framework in pragmatics; Stephen Neale defends the said/implicated distinction in philosophy of language.","era":"1913-1988","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Studies in the Way of Words","page":"pp. 377–378","canonical":"","quote":"Second, I have taken it as a working assumption that whether a particular enterprise aims at a specifically conversational result or outcome and so perhaps is a specifically conversational enterprise, or whether its central character is more generously conceived as having no special connection with communication, the same principles will determine the rationality of its conduct.","label":"Studies in the Way of Words, pp. 377–378"},{"n":2,"work":"Studies in the Way of Words","page":"p. 35","canonical":"","quote":"Echoing Kant, I call these categories Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Manner. The category of Quantity relates to the quantity of information to be provided, and under it fall the following maxims: (The second maxim is disputable; it might be said that to be overinformative is not a transgression of the Cooperative Principle but merely a waste of time.","label":"Studies in the Way of Words, p. 35"},{"n":3,"work":"Studies in the Way of Words","page":"p. 34","canonical":"","quote":"But while I have said that he is an Englishman, and said that he is brave, | do not want to say that I have said (in the favored sense) that it follows from his being an Englishman that he is brave, though I have certainly indicated, and so implicated, that this is so.","label":"Studies in the Way of Words, p. 34"},{"n":4,"work":"Studies in the Way of Words","page":"p. 38","canonical":"","quote":"But while some such quasi-contractual basis as this may apply to some cases, there are too many types of exchange, like quarreling and letter writing, that it fails to fit comfortably. In any case, one feels that the talker who is irrelevant or obscure has primarily let down not his audience but himself.","label":"Studies in the Way of Words, p. 38"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"the-intentional-analysis-of-meaning","label":"The intentional analysis of meaning: is non-natural meaning analyzable in terms of speakers' nested communicative intentions?"},{"slug":"modified-occam-s-razor-and-the-semantics-pragmatics-distinct","label":"Modified Occam's Razor and the semantics-pragmatics distinction: should apparent ambiguity in natural-language connectives be handled by positing distinct senses or by a single sense plus generalised conversational implicature?"},{"slug":"the-causal-theory-of-perception","label":"The Causal Theory of Perception: is sense data a defensible technical term, and does perception of a material object require a causal connection through a sense-impression?"},{"slug":"rationality-value-and-creature-construction","label":"Rationality, value, and creature-construction: can practical reason and value be constructed by a transcendental argument from the rational structure of action?"}]}