On the Daily Application of the Cooperative Principle

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摘要：会话作为最普通的一种交际方式,已经引起了众多学者的关注。美国语言学家格莱斯运用合作原则来阐述说明会话过程中隐含意义的表达，其原则的重大意义就在于为说话双方表达更多的会话含义提供了依据。本文将通过一系列日常生活中的例子，解释说明合作原则的应用并分析因违背该原则所产生的会话效果。

关键词：会话；合作原则

一、Introduction

The cooperative principle proposed by Paul Grice suggests that in making conversations the participants must be willing to cooperate otherwise it would not be possible for them to carry on the conversation.

Grice noticed that in daily conversations people do not usually say things directly but tend to imply them .The extra meaning implied in the utterance is known as implicature. The notion of conversational implicature is one of the single most important ideas in pragmatics. It provides some explicit account of how it is possible to mean more than what is actually“said”.

二、The Cooperative Principle and Four Maxims

1. The Cooperative Principle

It is Grice that the first person advanced the theory of the cooperative principle in Harvard university 1967.Grice says ,all of actions communication ,in order of achieve the specific destination ,there is an tacit agreement between the speaker and hearer, an agreement that both sides are expected to observe. It tries to explain how a speaker can mean more than what he says and how a hearer perceives what the speaker really means? Grice thinks there is a set of assumptions governing the conduct of conversation. This is what he calls the cooperative principle.

2. Four Maxims and the Violations of the Maxims

It includes four maxims: the maxim of quantity, the maxim of quality, the maxim of relation and the maxim of manner.

（1） Violation of the Maxim of Quantity

The maxim of quantity includes two aspects: the interlocutors should make their contributions as informative as is required, they should not make their contributions more or less informative than is required. Nevertheless, as we mentioned above, in people`s daily communication, the interlocutors often offer too much or inadequate information, that is to say , it deviates from the maxims of quantity.

（2）Violation of the Maxim of Quality

According to the maxim of quality, the interlocutors should offer the true information to others. They should not say what they believe to be false. Neither should they say that for which they lack adequate evidence. However, there are still many examples to flout the maxim of quality in the purpose to gain some special targets, using such techniques as irony, metaphor, hyperbole.

（3）Violation of the Maxim of Relation

According to the maxim of relation, the interlocutors shouldmake their contribution relevant. This maxim demands that the hearer should give answers relevant to what the speaker has said in their dialogue. The “relevant theory ”includes two sides. One is under the same condition, the more situation effect, the closer relation they are, the other is under the same condition, the less efforts to handle, the more relevant they are.

（4） Violation of the Maxim of Manner

The maxim of manner is different from other maxims in that it relates not to what is said，but rather, to how what is said is to be said. The interlocutors should try to avoid obscurity and ambiguity when trying to pass a message. They should also try to be brief, and the last requirement is to be orderly. This maxim requires that the conveyed meaning should be adequately clear.

三、The Effects of Violation of the Maxims

1. The Humor and the Maxims

When people flout the maxims, the implied meaning will come out. In some cases, it can provide people the sense of humor. For example:

Teacher: George Washington not only chopped down his father's cherry tree, but also admitted doing it. Now do you know why his father didn't punish him?

Student: Because George still had the axe in his hand.

The student does not answer the teacher’s question directly. Instead, he gives an answer from another side, which causes a strong sense of humor. The student fails to respond successfully to the teacher in that he flouts the maxim of Quality.

2. The Politeness and the Maxims

The factors that influence our communication are extremely complicated. And in our life people show their politeness and respect for others on the condition that the CP and the maxims are flouted. That is to say, not observing the CP and the maxims can contribute to the politeness in the conversation.

A: What do you think of my new trousers?

B: Well, I think the color is nice.

Although the listener doesn’t like the speaker’s trousers, because of politeness he just says the color is nice. It’s not difficult to know that B has the encoded meaning. At this time, the flouting of the maxims is indispensable to the preliminary politeness.

3. The Satire and the Maxims

The following example can tell us that the satire will come into being when we violate the maxims. That is to say, there is a relation between satire and the CP or its four maxims.

A: How is John’s life after marriage?

B: He has got a lioness at home.

In this case, B compares John’s wife to a lion, conveying that John’s wife is grisliness. The words imply a sense of satire.

四、Conclusion

As shown in these many examples above, it will achieve effects of conversation implicit beyond we expect because of violation one or some maxims of cooperative principle, especially in humorous conversation. It will benefit us that non-English country people thoroughly understand English culture, and more proficiently to use English.

In a word, the CP and its maxims are the general cognitive principle that enables us to enrich information by general reasoning strategies. This strongly suggests that the mastery of CP and the conversational implicative can lay a solid foundation for the human communication. The study on it has a great practical significance.

Bibliography：

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【责编 冯立伟】