Course 5: The Cooperative Principle and Implicature

1. The Cooperative Principle:

principle+4 maxims (Quantity; Quality; Relation; Manner)
flouting the maxims
hedges
2. Implicature
Conversational (generalized; particularized)
Conventional
Implicature (a term coined by H.P.Grice in the article Logic and Conversation, 1989) => refers to meaning
that is conveyed indirectly or through hints, but not explicitly stated
Eg. I should be back by eight but you know what trains are like.
The speaker implies/ creates the implicature that they probably wont get back by eight although they do not
state it explicitly. The hearer infers that the speaker will probably be late and also that trains are not reliable.
The Cooperative Principle: H.P.Grice (William James Lectures at Harvard University in 1967)
Grices principle is formulated as follows: Make your conversational 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.
According to this principle we interpret language on the assumption that its sender is observing four maxims:
1. Maxim of Quantity:

Make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purpose of the exchange.
Eg. I like some of the articles in this journal. > gives rise to the implicature I dont like all articles
Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.
Eg. I dont drink > I dont drink alcohol.

2. Maxim of Quality:

Do not say what you believe to be false;

Do not say that for which you lack evidence.

3. Maxim of Relation: Be relevant

Eg. A notice outside a pub which specializes in Sunday lunches says: Dont forget Mum on Mothers
Day>the implicature is: bring your mother here for Sunday lunch on Mothers Day
4. Maxim of Manner: Avoid obscurity of expression; Avoid ambiguity; Be brief; Be orderly.
I went to the conference and gave a talk > gives rise to the implicature in that order

FLOUTING MAXIMS
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Brown is the new black as far as shoes are concerned flouts the maxim of Manner
Im a man spoken by a man: a flout on Quantity as its self-evident
spoken by a woman: a flout on Quality as its false
He looks his age flouts Quantity as it is not informative enough
A: Have you done your homework?
B: Ive had a dentists appointment.
Flouts Relevance as Bs response isnt an answer to the question asked
Insults fly on aircraft toilets (newspaper headline) flouts Manner as it is ambiguous
The best 4x4xfar (Advertisement for Land Rover). the multiplication symbol represents the lexical item by
First and fourmost (Advertisement for Land Rover). homophones
BA better connected person (Advertisement, British Airways). ambiguity BA and be a and the ambiguity
between the connotations of better connected connected to more flights and having an impressive social
network
Acts on the spot (Advertisement for acne product). an obscure way of conveying both the idiomatic meaning
immediately and the literal meaning pimple
Flouting the co-operative principle in order to make a point more forcefully also explains:
metaphors (Queen Victoria was made of iron)
hyperbole (Ive got millions of beers in my cellar)
irony and sarcasm (I love it when you sing out of key all the time)
humour (e.g. puns)

In all cases of flouting the maxims, the utterance alerts the addressee to the need to infer an implied meaning.
Flouting the maxims generates implicatures.
The situations which chiefly interested Grice were those in which a speaker blatantly, deliberately, fails to
observe a maxim, not with any intention of deceiving or misleading, but because the speaker wants to prompt
the hearer to look for a meaning which is different from the expressed meaning.

HEDGES IN UTTERANCES
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Speakers are frequently reluctant to make bald statements, so they often use expressions or even entire clauses
as notes to either alleviate the impact of utterances or to comment on the maxims.
They are used to show that the speaker is cautious of the maxims.
Hedges have a metalingual function and serve as comments on the extent to which the speaker is abiding by the
conversational maxims.
They mark that speakers may be in danger of not fully adhering to the maxims. The following examples are
taken from Yule (1996:38-39):
E.g.:
Hedges to the Maxim of Quality:
a. As far as I know, theyre married.
b. I may be mistaken, but I thought I saw a wedding ring on her finger.
c. Im not sure if this is right, but I heard it was a secret ceremony in Hawaii.
d. He couldnt live without her, I guess.
Hedges to the Maxim of Quantity:
a. As you probably know, I am afraid of dogs.
b. So, to cut a long story short, we grabbed our stuff and ran.
c. I wont bore you with all the details, but it was an exciting trip.
Hedges to the Maxim of Relation:
a. I dont know if this is important, but some of the files are missing.
b. This may sound like a dumb question, but whose handwriting is this?
c. Not to change the subject, but is this related to the budget?
Hedges to the Maxim of Manner:
a. This may be a bit confused, but I remember being in a car.
b. Im not sure if this makes sense, but the car had no lights.
c. I dont know if this is clear at all, but I think the other car was reversing.

IMPLICATURE (a term coined by Grice in the article Logic and Conversation, 1989) = meaning that
is conveyed indirectly or through hints, but not explicitly stated
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Eg. I should be back by eight but you know what trains are like.
The speaker implies that they probably wont get back by eight although they do not state it explicitly. The
hearer infers that the speaker will probably be late and also that trains are not reliable.
Eg. Its the taste.
Context 1: Coca-Cola advertisement
Context 2: daughter to father when asked why she hasnt eaten her lunch at school.
The same sentence can convey 2 meanings that are the opposite of one another and neither meaning is explicitly
stated by the speaker.
In almost all utterances, it is context that makes the hearer distinguish between
what is said
what is meant and not said
Generalized conversational implicature

A generalized conversational implicature arises when no special knowledge is required to calculate the
additional conveyed meaning.

Scalar Implicature
Information may be conveyed using a word which expresses one value from a scale of values such as:
All-most-many-some-few
Will-should-may-might
Always-often-sometimes-never
When producing the utterance, a speaker selects the word from the scale of values which best suits the purpose
of communication and is the most informative and truthful (quantity and quality).
Some of the hijackers have been caught. not All-most-many- -few
When any form in the scale is asserted, the negative of all forms higher on the scale is implicated.

Particularized conversational implicature

Teacher: Have you done your homework?
Pupil: Ive had a dentists appointment.
The assumed knowledge on which Teacher must draw in order to make the correct inference, is that if one goes
to the dentist, they do not have enough time left to do ones homework.
The context on which interlocutors need to draw in order to make implicatures and inferences may be local,
known to them only:
Ann: Where are you going with the dog?
Sam: To the V-E-T.
Sam produces a more elaborate than required version of his message, implicating that he doesnt want the dog
to know the answer to the question just asked.

Conventional implicatures
There are some words that help create non-conversational implicatures, such as but, even and still.