语言学概论 中 合作原则一节

The cooperative principle

Thus far we have known that an utterance may allow two interpretations in some situations: the literal meaning and the non-literal meaning. In order to account for such a linguistic phenomenon, Grice in 1967 found that tacit agreement exists between the speaker and the hearer in all linguistic communicative activities. They follow a set of principles in order to achieve particular communicative goals. Thus, Grice proposed the term of the cooperative principle and its maxims.

According to the cooperative principle, the participants in a conversation normally communicate in a maximally efficient, rational and cooperative way. They should speak sincerely, relevantly and clearly, while providing sufficient information.

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)The maxim of quality

Try to make your contribution one that is true, especially(i) do not say what you believe to be false and (ii) do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

(2)The maxim of quantity

(i) Make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purposes of the exchange, and (ii) do not make your contribution mire informative than is required.

（3）The maxim of relevance

Make your contribution relevance.

(3)The maxim of manner

(4)Be perspicuous, and specifically: (i) Avoid obscurity of expression;(ii) Avoid

ambiguity;(iii) Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity) and (iv) Be orderly.

But in real communication, the participants often flout the cooperative principle and its maxims. In such cases, conversational implicatures arise.

The term conversational implicature refers to the additional unstated meaning that has to be assumed in order to maintain the cooperative principle. Conversational implicatures fall into two categories: standard conversational implicature and particulatized conversational implicature.

Standard conversational implicature (also called generalized conversational implicature) refers to the inference that arises from observing cooperative principle and its maxims. Particularized conversational implicature refers to the implicature that arise from flouting the cooperative principle and its maxims. In contrast, an additional unstated meaning associated with the use of a specific word is referred to in linguistics as conventional implicature.

An utterance may be interpreted as either observing or flouting the cooperative principle by attributing to different contexts. Take for example B’s utterance in the following dialogue:

A: May we know your age, please?

B: I’m nineteen years old.

We may interpret the utterance as the result of observing the cooperative principle and thus infer that B is only nineteen years old. If we know that B is, say, fourteen years old, he or she is flouting the quality maxim, In order to maintain the