Page 413 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

outcome, while at the same time avoiding putting on record the fact that her government has intervened in the affairs of another country. In fact, this exchange was widely reported and the implicature spelt out in news broadcasts later the same day: Although they have not admitted it openly, the State Department is letting it be known that the United States was behind Jean-Paul Duvalier's decision to quit the island. Nor can one sensibly ascribe the speaker's use of indirect- ness to any desire to be 'polite' (at least, in the normal sense of the term)—it appears to be motivated by the fact that she has two goals which are difficult to reconcile. This 'desire to say and not say' something at the same time is lucidly discussed by Dascal (1983), together with other social factors which lead speakers to employ indirectness.
The important thing to note in each of these cases is that it is the very blatancy of the nonobservance which triggers the search for an implicature. The same is true in each of the cases which follow.
3. CommonMisrepresentationsofGrice'sTheory
There are many criticisms which can be made of Grice's work. However, there are four criticisms of his work which are made very frequently (particularly by nonspecialists) and which are totally unfounded. The first is that Grice had a ludicrously optimistic view of human nature: that he saw the world as a place full of people whose one aim in life was to cooperate with others. This is a complete misreading of Grice's work and is discussed in detail in the Co- operative Principle article.
The second unfounded criticism is that Grice was proposing a set of rules for good (conversational) behavior. This misunderstanding probably stems from the unfortunate fact that Grice formulated his maxims as imperatives. But it is clear from everything else he wrote on the subject that his chief objective was simply to describe linguistic behaviors which, by and large, people do observe in conversation unless they wish to generate an implicature, or are delib- erately setting out to mislead, or are prevented for some reason from so doing (e.g., nervousness, an inad- equate grasp of the language).
The third misconception represents Grice as believ- ing that his maxims are always and invariably observed. This is simply false—such a claim would make complete nonsense of his theory. Discussing the maxims in his 1978 and 1981 papers, Grice refers to them as being:
standardly (though not invariably) observed by par- ticipants in a talk exchange.
desiderata that normally would be accepted by any rational discourser, though, of course, they could be infringed and violated.
The fourth misunderstanding is to confuse the different types of nonobservance of the maxim. This
seems to come from an incomplete reading of Grice's articles, or a reliance on second-hand accounts (few general linguistics textbooks discuss any categories other than flouting). A typical criticism of this order (this one is from Sampson 1982: 203) runs as follows:
people often flout his [Grice's] maxims. To anyone who knew, for instance, my old scout at Oxford, or a certain one of the shopkeepers in the village where I live, it would be ludicrous to suggest that as a general principle people's speech is governed by maxims such as 'be relevant'; 'do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence'(!); 'avoid obscurity of expression, ambiguity or unnecessary prolixity'(!). In the case of the particular speakers I am thinking o f . . . the converse of Grice's maxims might actu- ally have greater predictive power.
What Sampson is discussing is not the flouting of a maxim (that is, the blatant nonobservance for the purpose of generating an implicature). What he is describing is the unmotivated or unintentional non- observance of a maxim, which Grice calls 'infringing' (see Sect. 4.2).
Grice was well aware that there are many occasions on which speakers fail to observe the maxims, even though they have no desire to generate an implicature, and even though his categories seem to cover all poss- ible instances of nonobservance.
4. Categories of Nonobservance of the Conversational Maxims
In his first paper (1975: 49), Grice listed three ways in which a participant in a talk exchange may fail to fulfill a maxim: the speaker may flout a maxim, 'viol- ate' a maxim, or 'opt out' of observing a maxim. He later added a fourth category of nonobservance: 'infringing' a maxim. Several writers since Grice have argued the need for a fifth category—'suspending' a maxim, and this category is considered along with the others. Having made all these distinctions, it is irritating to note that Grice himself does not always use the terms consistently, and that remarkably few commentators seem to make any attempt to use the terms correctly. The distinctions which Grice orig- inally made are important for a full understanding of his theory. Flouting has already been examined in detail, and each of the others is now considered in turn.
4.1 Violating a Maxim
Many commentators incorrectly use the term 'violate' for all forms of nonobservance of the maxims. But in his first published paper on conversational coop- eration (1975), Grice defines 'violation' very specifi- cally as the unostentatious nonobservance of a maxim. If a speaker violates a maxim, he or she 'will be liable to mislead' (1975: 49).
Example (9) is an extract from an interaction between a headmaster and a pupil. It has already been established that the addressee, Hannah (a girl aged
Conversational Maxims
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