4. Cooperative Principle, Implicature Flashcards
Cooperative Principle
Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose
Role of Maxims
- help to regulate the coordination
- based of the belief that the speaker follows the maxims
- principles - if violated, it is harder to understand
Maxim of Quality
Supermaxim: Try to make the contribution one that is true
- Don’t say what you believe to be false
- Don’t say for what you lack adequate evidence
Maxim of Quantity
Related to the quality of contribution
- Make the contribution as informative as it is required (-for the current purpose of the exchange)
- Do not make the contribution more informative than is needed - not to be over informative
Maxim of Relation
contributions appropriate to the immediate needs - BE RELEVANT (to the topic)
Maxim of Manner
Be perspicuous
- avoid obscurity of expression
- be brief
- avoid ambiguity
- be orderly
Four ways to violate a maxim
- Violation
- Opting out
- Clash
- Flouting
Violation
may be misleading (the hearer expect you to have the evidence for the statement which you don’t have)
Opting out
Unwilling to cooperate
Clash
unable to fulfil the maxim of quantity without violating the maxim of quality
Flouting
blatantly fail to fulfil a maxim - synonym to violation but not that serious (communicating more)
Implicature
Bridge between what a speakers say and what they communicate
Conventional X Conversational Implicature
Conventional – not sharing dependent knowledge, cannot be cancelled, context-independent, detachable (Ken knows it is unethical)
Conversational – context dependent, can be cancelled, non-detachable (bank – hasn’t been to prison – sticky fingers)
Scalar implicature
Implicate that, as far as the speaker knows, no higher value applies
