The Cooperative Principle

1. Definition
2. The four conversational maxims
A.Maxim of quantity
B.Maxim of quality
C.Maxim of relation or relevance
D.Maxim of manner
3. Observing the maxims
4. Non-observance of the maxims
A. Flouting the maxims
1. Flouts exploiting maxim quantity
2. Flouts exploiting maxim quality
3. Flouts exploiting maxim relation or relevance
4. Flouts exploiting maxim manner
B. Violating the maxims
C. Infringing a maxim
D. Opting out of a maxim
E. Suspending a maxim
1. Definition
According to (Cutting, Joan. Pragmatics and Discourse: A resource
book for students. Florence,KY, USA: Routledge, 2003, p 33) the
concept of cooperative principle was introduced by Paul Grice, a
philosopher of language introduced the concept in his pragmatic
theory, argued such:
Make your contribution such 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.[1]: 45

In other words, say what you need to say, when you need to say it,
and how it should be said.
1. Definition
According to Jenny A. Thomas - Meaning in Interaction_ An
Introduction to Pragmatics-Routledge (1995) (Learning about
Language) p 62.
The fact that Grice expressed the Cooperative Principle in the
imperative mood has led some casual readers of his work to believe
that Grice was telling speakers how they ought to behave. What he
was actually doing was suggesting that in conversational interaction
people work on the assumption that a certain set of rules is in
operation, unless they receive indications to the contrary.
 Example
The speaker has accidentally locked herself out of her house. It is
winter, the middle of the night and she is stark naked:
A : D o you want a coat?
B: No , I really want to stand out here in the freezing cold
with no clothes on.
On the face of it, B's reply is untrue and uncooperative, but in fact
this is the sort of sarcastic reply we encounter every day and have no
problem at all in interpreting. How do we interpret it? According to
Grice, if A assumes that, in spite of appearances, B is observing the
Cooperative Principle and has made an appropriate response to his
question, he will look for an alterna- tive interpretation.

Though phrased as a prescriptive command, the principle is

intended as a description of how people normally behave in
conversation.
1. Definition
Stephen C. Levinson - Pragmatics-Cambridge University Press (1983)
(Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics) p 101 Grice identifies as
guidelines of this sort four basic
maxims of conversation or general principles underlying the
efficient co-operative use of language, which jointly express a
general eo-operative principle. The cooperative principle describes
how people achieve effective conversational communication in
common social situations—that is, how listeners and speakers act
cooperatively and mutually accept one another to be understood in
a particular way.
 2 .The four conversational
maxims
In 'Logic and conversation' Grice proposed four maxims, the maxims of
Quantity, Quality, Relation and Manner, which were formulated as
follows:

A. Maxim quantity
•Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current
purpose o f the ex-change).
•Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.
•The speakers should be as informative as is required, which means
they should give neither too little information nor too much. Some
speakers like to point to the fact that they know how much
information the hearer requires or can be bothered with.
 Example of
maxim of quantity
‘Well, to cut a long story short, she didn’t get home till two”
People who give too little information risk their hearer not being
able to identify what they are talking about because they are not
explicit enough; those who give more information than hearer
needs risk boring them.

Other example: At a particular stage I need four screws, I expect you

to hand me four, rather than two or six.
 2. The four conversational
maxims
B. Maxim of quality
• Speakers are expected to be sincere, to be saying something that they believe
corresponds to reality. They are assumed not to say anything that they believe
to be false or anything for which they lack evidence. Some speakers like to draw
their hearers’ attention to the fact that they are only saying what they believe
to be true, and that they lack adequate evidence.
• Try to make your contribution one that is true, specifically:do not say what you
believe to be false do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence
• In simple terms, the maxim of quality is to be truthful.
 Example of
maxim of quality
‘A : I’ll ring you tomorrow afternoon then.
B : Erm, I shall be there as far as I know, and in the meantime have a word with Mum and Dad if
they’re free, Right, bye-bye then sweetheart.
A : Bye-bye, bye.
(BNC: kc8 Gillian,1991)
B says ‘as far as I ‘, meaning I can’t be totally sure if this is true, so that if A rings
up and finds that B is not there, B is protected from accusations of lying by the fact that she did
make it clear that she was uncertain. Most hearers assume that speakers are not lying, and most
speakers know that.

Other example :
"I expect your contributions to be genuine and not spurious. If I need sugar as an ingredient in
the cake you are assisting me to make, I do not expect you to hand me salt; if I need a spoon, I do
not expect a trick spoon made of rubber."
 2.The four conversational
maxims
C. Maxim of relation or relevance
• Make your contributions relevant
• Be relevant — i.e., one should ensure that all the information they provide is
relevant to the current exchange; therefore omitting any irrelevant information.
• The speakers are assumed to be saying something that is relevant to what has
been said before. Thus if we hear ‘The baby cried. The mommy picked it up.’
(Garfinkel 1967), we assumed that the ‘mommy’ was the mother of the crying
baby and that she picked the baby up because it was crying.
 Example of
maxim of relation or
relevance
‘A :There’s somebody at the door.
B : I’m in the bath.

B expects A to understand that his present location is relevant to her comment that there is
someone at the door, and that he cannot go and see who it is because he is in the bath. Some
speakers like to indicate how their comment has relevance to the conversation.
 Example of
maxim of relation or
relevance
The other example of maxim of relation or relevance
Grice uses the following analogy for this maxim: "I expect a partner’s contribution to be
appropriate to the immediate needs at each stage of the transaction. If I am mixing ingredients
for a cake, I do not expect to be handed a good book, or even an oven cloth (though this might be
an appropriate contribution at a later stage)."

With respect to this maxim, Grice writes,Though the maxim itself is terse, its formulation conceals
a number of problems that exercise me a good deal: questions about what different kinds and
focuses of relevance there may be, how these shift in the course of a talk exchange, how to allow
for the fact that subjects of conversations are legitimately changed, and so on. I find the
treatment of such questions exceedingly difficult, and I hope to revert to them in later work.
 2. The four conversational
maxims
D. Maxim of manner
The last is the maxim of manner:
•Which says that we should be brief and orderly, and avoid obscurity and ambiguity.
•Be brief — i.e., avoid unnecessary verbosity.
•Be orderly — i.e., provide information in an order that makes sense, and makes it
easy for the recipient to process it.
•Avoid obscurity of expression — i.e., avoid language that is difficult to
understand.
•Avoid ambiguity — i.e., avoid language that can be interpreted in multiple ways.
•In simple terms, the maxim of manners is to be clear.
•Be perspicuous.
 Example of
maxim of Manner

‘Thank you Chairman. Jus- just to clarify one point. There is a meeting of the Police
Committee on Monday and there's an item on their budget for the provision of their
camera.

(BNC:j44 West Sussex Council Highways Committee Meeting, 1994).

Conclusion of the four
Maxim
Grice said that hearers assume that speakers observe the
cooperative principle,and that it is the knowledge of the four
maxim that allows hearers to draw inferences about the
speakers’ intention and implied meaning. The meaning
conveyed by speakers and recovered as a result of the
hearers’ inferences, is known as conversational implicature.
These maxims specify what participants have to do in order
to converse in a maximally
efficient, rational, eo-operative way: they should speak
sincerely, relevantly and clearly, while providing sufficient
information.
3. Observing the
Maxim
The least interesting case is when a speaker observes all the
maxims as in the following example:
Example 10
Husband: Where are the car keys?
Wife: They're on the table in the hall.

The wife has answered clearly (Manner) truthfully (Quality), has

given just the right amount of information (Quantity) and has
directly addressed her husband's goal in asking the question
(Relation). She has said precisely what she meant, no more and no
less, and has generated no implicature (i.e. there is no distinction
to be made here between what she says and what she means,
there is no additional level of meaning).
4. Non-observance of the maxim

Grice was well aware, however, that there are very many
occasions when people fail to observe the maxims. There
are five ways of failing to observe a maxim:
A. Flouting the maxims
1. Flouts exploiting maxim quantity
2. Flouts exploiting maxim quality
3. Flouts exploiting maxim relation or relevance
4. Flouts exploiting maxim manner
B. Violating the maxims
C. Infringing a maxim
D. Opting out of a maxim
E. Suspending a maxim
 Flouting the Maxim

When the speakers appear not to follow the maxims but expect hearers to
appreciate the meaning implied, as in the case of the dress shop assistant, the
romantic date and the chilly room, we say that they are ‘flouting’ the maxims. Just as
with an indirect speech act, the speaker implies a function different from the literal
meaning of form; when flouting a maxim, the speakers assume that the hearer
knows that their words should not be taken at face value and that they can infer the
implicit meaning.
Flouting means that the circumstances lead us to think that the speaker is
nonetheless obeying the cooperative principle, and the maxims are followed on
some deeper level, again yielding a conversational implicature.
.
 Flouting the Maxim
1 Fouts Exploiting Maxim Quantity
A flout of the maxim of Quantity occurs when a speaker blatantly gives more or less
information than the situation requires.
Example: Example 15
A: How are we getting there?
B: Well we're getting there in Dave's car.
B blatantly gives less information than A needs, thereby generating the implicature that,
while she and her friends have a lift arranged, A will not be traveling with them.
Other example of Flouts exploiting maxim quantity:
A : Well, how do I look?
B : Your shoes are nice.

B does not say that the sweatshirt and jeans do not look ice, but he knows that A will
understand that implication, because A asks about whole appearance and only gets told
about part of it.
 Flouting the Maxim
2 Flouts exploiting maxim quality
Flouts which exploit the maxim of Quality occur when the speaker says something which is
blatantly untrue or for which he or she lacks adequate evidence.
Example:
Example 3
hate on Christmas Eve 1993 an ambulance is sent to pick up a man who has collapsed in
Newcastle city centre. The man is drunk and vomits all over the ambulanceman who goes to
help him. The ambulanceman says:
'Great, that's really great! That's made my Christmas!'
 Flouting the Maxim
2
According to Grice, the deductive process might work like this:
(i) The ambulanceman has expressed pleasure at having someone vomit over him.
(ii) There is no example in recorded history of people being delighted at having someone
vomit over them.
(iii) I have no reason to believe that the ambulanceman is trying to deceive us in any way.
(iv) Unless the ambulanceman's utterance is entirely pointless, he must be trying to put
across some other proposition.
(v) This must be some obviously related proposition.
(vi) The most obviously related proposition is the exact opposite of the one he has expressed.
(vi) The ambulanceman is extremely annoyed at having the drunk vomit over him.
 Flouting the Maxim
2
The other example of Flouts exploiting maxim quality:
Lynn : Yes I’m starving too.
Martin : Hurry up girl
Lynn : Oh dear, stop eating rubbish. You won’t eat any dinner.

In which ‘I’m starving’ is a well established exaggerating expression. The speaker simply
meant that they were very hungry. Hyperbole is :often at the basis of humor.
 Flouting the Maxim
2 Conclusion
Flouts exploiting maxim quality
A speaker can flout the maxim of quality by using a metaphor, as in ‘My house
is a refrigerator in January’. Also use irony and banter. While irony is an
apparently friendly way of being offensive (mock-politeness), the type of verbal
behavior known as “banter” is an offensive way of being friendly (mock
impoliteness).Sarcasm is a form of irony that is not so friendly; in fact it is
usually intended to hurt.
 Flouting the Maxim
3 Flouts exploiting maxim relation or
relevance

The maxim of Relation ('Be relevant') is exploited by making a response or

observation which is very obviously irrelevant to the topic in hand (e.g. by
abruptly changing the subject, or by overtly failing to address the other
person's goal in asking a question
 Flouting the Maxim
3 Example of Flouts exploiting maxim
relation or relevance

Example of Flouts exploiting maxim relation or relevance:

I finished working on my face. I grabbed my bag and a coat. I told Mother I was
going out ... She asked me where I was going. I repeated myself. 'Out.'

In this example the speaker, Olivia, makes a response which is truthful, clear,
etc., and which does answer her mother's Question What it does not do is
address her mother's goal in asking the question: her mother can see that
Olivia is going out, what she wants to know is where she is going.
 Flouting the Maxim
4 Flouts exploiting maxim manner
Those who flout the maxim of manner, appearing to be obscure.
Example:
Example 20
This interaction occurred during a radio interview with an unnamed official
from the United States Embassy in Port-au-Prince, Haiti:
Interviewer: Did the Unite d States Government play any part in Duvalier's
departure? Did they, for example, actively encourage him to leave?
Official: I would not try to steer you away from that conclusion.

The official could simply have replied: 'Yes'. Her actual response is extremely
long-winded and convoluted and it is obviously no accident, nor through any
inability to speak clearly, that she has failed to observe the maxim of Manner
 Violating the Maxim

A speaker can be said to ‘violate’ a maxim when they know that the hearer will not
know the truth and will only understand the surface meaning of the words. They
intentionally generate a misleading implicature (Thomas 1995:73); maxim violation
is ostentatiously, quietly deceiving. The speakers deliberately supplies insufficient
information, says something that is insincere, irrelevant or ambiguous, and the
hearer wrongly assumes that they are cooperating.
 Infringing a Maxim

A speaker who, with no intention of generating an implicature and with no intention

of deceiving, fails to observe a maxim is said to 'infringe' the maxim. In other words,
the non-observance stems from imperfect linguistic performance rather than from
any desire on the part of the speakers to generate a conversational implicature.
 Opting out of a Maxim

Examples of opting out occur frequently in public life, when the speaker cannot,
perhaps for legal or ethical reasons, reply in the way normally expected. On the
other hand, the speaker wishes to avoid generating a false implicature or appearing
uncooperative.
 Suspending a Maxim

Several writers have suggested that there are occasions when there is no need to
opt out of observing the maxims because there are certain events in which there is
no expectation on the part of any participant that they will be fulfilled (hence the
non-fulfilment does not generate any implicatures).