Page 411 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

1. The Four Conversational Maxims
Grice (1975) proposed the four maxims of'quantity,' 'quality,' 'relation,' and 'manner,' which were for- mulated as follows (1):
a departmental colleague who was standing next to the clock if he would tell them the time. Imagine he replied: Well, according to this clock it's a quarter to four, when he could simply have said: It's a quarter to
four. According to Grice, such a response would set in motion a process of informal reasoning which would lead one to derive an additional piece of infor- mation. This might work in the followingway (3):
(a) Y our colleague has clearly given you more (3) information than you required. He appears to
have breached the maxim of quantity.
(b) However,youhavenoreasontobelievethat he is being deliberately uncooperative (i.e., that he is failing to
observe the cooperative principle (CP)).
(c) You must conclude that his failure to observe the maxim of quantity is due to his wish to observe the CP in some
other way. You must work out why the CP should force
your colleague to give more information than yourequested.
(d) The failure to observe the maxim of quantity can be explained if you assume that your colleague also
wishes to observe the maxim of quality. You conclude that for some reason he is confronted with a clash between these maxims (either he tells the truth
or he gives you just the right amount of
information).
(e) His reply is a compromise, which leads you
to deduce that he is not sure that he has given you the exact time
because the clock in the department is often inaccurate.
Thus, Grice's explanation for the nonobservance of the maxim of quality in this instance is that the speaker was faced with a clash of maxims. The speaker found himself unable simultaneously to observe the maxims of quality and quantity, signaled his dilemma by fla- grantly failing to give the right amount of information, and prompted his interlocutor to draw an inference. A similar explanation might be offered for the following instance of nonobservance of the maxim of quantity. In this case, the second speaker gives less information than the situation demands (4):
A: Has Chris given up smoking? (4) B: Well, he's certainly stopped buying his own.
B might simplyhave replied: 'No.' It would be possible to argue that his failure to do so stems from a clash between the maxims of quantity and quality (B does not know for sure whether Chris has given up smok- ing, and speaks only on the basis of the evidence he has). But this explanation is rather implausible. It is better explained by what Grice terms 'exploiting' the maxims.
Quantity:
Quality:
Relation: Manner:
Make your contribution as informative (1) as is required (for the current purpose of
the exchange).
Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.
Do not say what you believe to be false. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
Be relevant.
Avoid obscurity of expression.
Avoid ambiguity.
Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity). Be orderly.
A
following example (2):
speaker might observe all the maxims, as in the
Father: Mother:
Where are the children? (2) They're either in the garden or in the playroom, I'm not surewhich.
The mother has answered clearly (manner), truthfully (quality), has given just the right amount of infor- mation (quantity), and has directly addressed her hus- band's goal in asking the question (relation). She has said precisely what she meant, no more and no less, and has generated no implicature (that is, there is no distinction to be made here between what she says and what she means).
Grice was well aware, however, that there are very many occasions when people fail to observe the max- ims (this might be because, for example, they are incapable of speaking clearly, or because they delib- erately choose to lie). In his writings, he discussed each of these possibilities, but the situations which chiefly interested him were those in which a speaker blatantly fails to observe a maxim, not with any inten- tion of deceiving or misleading, but because the speaker wishes to prompt the hearer to look for a meaning which is different from, or in addition to, the expressed meaning. This additional meaning he called 'conversational implicature,' and he termed the pro- cess by which it is generated 'flouting a maxim.'
2. FloutingaMaxim
A 'flout' occurs when a speaker blatantly fails to observe a maxim at the level of what is said, with the deliberate intention of generating an implicature. There follow examples of flouts of each of the maxims in turn, and also a review of Grice's discussions of the reasons for flouting a maxim.
2.1 Flouts Necessitated by a 'Clash between Maxims'
A speaker flouts the maxim of quantity by blatantly giving either more or less information than the situ- ation demands. For example, imagine someone asked
Conversational Maxims
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