Gricean maxims - Revision history

NBlöcher: Added the "see also" section

2014-07-13T12:44:02Z

Added the "see also" section

Haspelmath at 14:36, 6 October 2007

2007-10-06T14:36:02Z

Haspelmath at 14:33, 6 October 2007

2007-10-06T14:33:57Z

Haspelmath: New page: In semantics/pragmatics, the '''Gricean maxims''' are communicative principles that were proposed by H.P. Grice as an elaboration of his Cooperative Principle. He distinguished fou...

2007-10-06T14:32:59Z

New page: In semantics/pragmatics, the '''Gricean maxims''' are communicative principles that were proposed by H.P. Grice as an elaboration of his Cooperative Principle. He distinguished fou...

New page

In semantics/pragmatics, the '''Gricean maxims''' are communicative principles that were proposed by [[H.P. Grice]] as an elaboration of his [[Cooperative Principle]]. He distinguished four categories, with several submaxims (Grice 1975):

'''Quantity'''
1 Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange).
2 Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.

'''Quality''': ‘Try to make your contribution one that is true’
1 Do not say what you believe to be false.
2 Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

'''Relevance''': ‘Be relevant’

'''Manner''': ‘Be perspicuous’
1 Avoid obscurity of expression.
2 Avoid ambiguity.
3 Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).
4 Be orderly.

A speaker who is assumed to be cooperative, can be interpreted as meaning more than he literally says, either by following the maxims or by intentionally flouting them. EXAMPLE:

A: Miss X produced a series of sounds that corresponded closely with the score of ‘Home Sweet Home.’

By choosing this prolix formulation (instead of the simple Miss X sang ‘Home Sweet Home’) A violates the Manner maxim, but because of cooperativity, we are invited to assume that he must have had a reason for this, wanting to implicate (i.e. wanting his utterance to have the implicature) that there was something seriously wrong with Miss X’s singing. In later work, reductions of the maxims have been proposed, yielding two main directions of thought, the Neo-Gricean theory (Atlas and Levinson 1981, Horn 1984) and the Relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson 1986).

===Link===
[http://www2.let.uu.nl/Uil-OTS/Lexicon/ Utrecht Lexicon of Linguistics]

===References===
*Atlas, J. and S. Levinson (1981)
*Horn, L.. (1984)
Sperber, D. and D. Wilson (1986)

← Older revision		Revision as of 12:44, 13 July 2014
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	By choosing this prolix formulation (instead of the simple Miss X sang ‘Home Sweet Home’) A violates the Manner maxim, but because of cooperativity, we are invited to assume that he must have had a reason for this, wanting to implicate (i.e. wanting his utterance to have the implicature) that there was something seriously wrong with Miss X’s singing. In later work, reductions of the maxims have been proposed, yielding two main directions of thought, the Neo-Gricean theory (Atlas and Levinson 1981, Horn 1984) and the Relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson 1986).		By choosing this prolix formulation (instead of the simple Miss X sang ‘Home Sweet Home’) A violates the Manner maxim, but because of cooperativity, we are invited to assume that he must have had a reason for this, wanting to implicate (i.e. wanting his utterance to have the implicature) that there was something seriously wrong with Miss X’s singing. In later work, reductions of the maxims have been proposed, yielding two main directions of thought, the Neo-Gricean theory (Atlas and Levinson 1981, Horn 1984) and the Relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson 1986).
		+
		+	===See also===
		+	* [[Maxim of manner]]
		+	* [[Maxim of relevance]]
		+	* [[Maxim of quality]]
		+	* [[Maxim of quantity]]

	===Link===		===Link===

@@ Line 17: / Line 17: @@
 Be orderly.
-A speaker who is assumed to be cooperative, can be interpreted as meaning more than he literally says, either by following the maxims or by intentionally flouting them. EXAMPLE:
+A speaker who is assumed to be cooperative, can be interpreted as meaning more than he literally says, either by following the maxims or by intentionally flouting them.
 A: Miss X produced a series of sounds that corresponded closely with the score of ‘Home Sweet Home.’
@@ Line 27: / Line 29: @@
 ===References===
-*Atlas, J. and S. Levinson (1981)
+*Atlas, J. and S. Levinson (1981) It-clefts, informativeness, and logical form, In: P. Cole ed., Radical Pragmatics, 1-61, New York: Academic Press
-*Horn, L.. (1984)
+*Horn, Lawrence. (1984) Toward a new taxonomy for pragmatic inference: Q-based and R-based implicature, In: D. Schiffrin ed., Meaning, Form and Use in Context (GURT '84), 11-42, Washington: Georgetown University Press
-*Sperber, D. and D. Wilson (1986)
+*Sperber, D. and D. Wilson (1986) ''Relevance: Communication and Cognition'', Oxford: Blackwell
 {{dc}}
 [[Category:Semantics]]
 [[Category:Pragmatics]]