LECTURE 13; SPEAKING INTERPERSONALLY II

The Co-operative Principle

(Conversational Maxims)

Normal conversation proceeds smoothly because speakers and listeners co-operate in them to make them work.

Paul Grice (1975) has described four ‘maxims’ or principles, which develop co-operative behaviour. These maxims are:

The Maxim of Quality (Be truthful)

Make your contribution one that is true. In other words:

  • Do not say what you believe to be false.
  • Do not say anything for which you lack adequate evidence.

The Maxim of Quantity(Be concise)

  • Make your contribution just as informative as required and no more.

The Maxim of Relation(Be relevant)

  • Make your conversation relevant and timely.

The Maxim of Manner(Be clear)

  • Avoid obscurity and ambiguity.

In speech practice, these maxims are often broken or violated (flaunted or flouted) and, when this happens, listeners work harder to get at the underlying meaning, e.g.

Speaker:How did you find the play?

Listener:The lighting was good.

By choosing not to be relevant/informative as required, B is probably suggesting that the play is not worth watching.

Compare with the following exchange deliberately free of such ambiguity:

A:How did you find the play?

B:Oh, it was very interesting.

OR

B:Well, it was rather dull, so I left early.

(B is being relevant.)

ESL/EFL learners might have problems later in conversational situations where the maxims are not observed.

Gricean maxims might be realised differently in different cultures, and speakers/learners of second/foreign languages need to be told if they are saying too much or too little without realising it.

Being truthful or lying?

I’ve got a million beer bottles in my cellar, or

My car breaks down every five minutes.

(Figures of speech, hyperbole, or exaggeration for more forceful speech)

Queen Victoria was made of iron.

(‘was made of iron’ used as a metaphor)

I love it when you sing out of key all the time.

(Intended effect: irony or sarcasm)

(From Cook, 1989: 31)

Similarly, the other three maxims may be flouted in conversation for communication effect:

The Politeness Principle

The Gricean maxims are followed or violated to create social meaning as attitudes of the speaker are signalled to the listener.

There is another set of maxims that work in a similar way to convey social meaning through language use.

This alternative set has been suggested by the linguist Robin Lakoff. (1973), and is called the politeness principle comprising the maxims:

  1. Do not impose.
  2. Give options.
  3. Make your receiver feel good.

The Reality Principle

There is yet another principle of conversation that is less known. This is the principle of reality:

  • The listener expects the speaker to talk about real and/or achievable things, unless there is evidence to the contrary.

E.g. ‘I’m flying to London tonight’ – the listener does not expect the speaker to literally sprout wings and fly to the destination mentioned (which, of course cannot be real nor achievable). Instead the listener knows that the person intends to board a plane for the same purpose.

  • the reality principle can be, and is often, violated in various ways for humorous effect, irony, and figurative use of language.

The Complex Social Dimension of Conversational Principles

  • The co-operative, politeness, and reality principles, and the interactions among them in real life conversation make speech a very complex process.
  • Generally, how the principles are applied reflect a dual purpose in human communication:
  1. In most situations, people are able to act efficiently with each other, while establishing and maintaining relationships i.e. speech efficiency is dominant/more important. See Cook’s example (1) below.
  2. In some situations, relationships might become more dominant while other purposes might not be of much importance. See Cook’s example (2) below.

Examples by Cook (1989, p. 34):

(1)In an emergency, when immediate action is needed, people cannot afford to be polite: if you saw a heavy chandelier about to fall on someone's head in a cinema, you would be forgiven if you shouted ‘Move!’

(2)If you shouted ‘Move!’ at someone obstructing your view of the screen at the cinema, you would be considered rude. Thus in the second instance you are more likely to say, ‘Excuse me, would you mind moving slightly. I can’t see the screen very clearly.’

1