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1.

2 Cooperative Principle

The success of conversation depends on the various speakers approach


to the interaction. The way in which people try to make conversations work is
called Cooperative Principle. The Cooperative principle is a basic underlying
assumption we make when we speak to one another is that we are trying to
cooperate with one another to construct meaningful conversations.

Grice(1975,p55 ) proposes the Cooperative Principle which states “make your


conversational contribution such is required, as the stage at which it occurs by the
accepted purpose or the direction of the talk exchange which you are engaged”. In
other words, we as the speakers should contribute meaningful, productive utterance
to further the conversation. It then follows that, as listeners we assume that our
conversational partners are doing the same. Concerning with his Cooperative
Principle, Grice divides Cooperative principle into four basic conversational
maxims .

1.2.1 Maxim of Quantity

Maxim of quantity as one of the cooperative principle is primarily concerned


with giving information as it is required and that not giving the contribution more
informative than it required. Therefore, each participant’s contribution to
conversation should be just as informative as it requires, it should not be less
informative or more informative. And say as much as helpful but not more
informative or less informative.
Finnegan ( 2004, p.93) defines that the maxim of quantity provides that in
normal circumstance, speakers say just enough, that they supply no less
information and no more than is necessary for the purpose of the communication,
for example:

A: Where is the hospital?

B: In the next of that store.

It can be seen that B information is informative and give enough contribution


toward A‟s question about the exact location of hospital. [Finnegan, 2004, p.93]

1.2.2 Maxim of Quality

The Maxim of Quality proposes that the speaker should tell the truth in a
conversation in order to communicate cooperatively.

( Grice 1975, p.44) states that when engaged in conversation, the Maxim of
Quality requires that you

1. Do not say what you believe to be false.

2. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

For example

A : Where is Eiffel tower located?

B : In Paris

Here, Smith gives the correct answer which shows about the true fact [Grice 1975,
p.44].
1.2.3 Maxim of Relation

Maxims of relation means that the utterance must be relevant which the topic
being discussed.

Finegan (2004) states that this maxim directs speakers about their utterance in
such a way that they are relevant to ongoing context: Be relevant at the time of the
utterance. The maxim of relevance is fulfilled when the speaker gives contribution
that is relevant to the topic of preceding utterance [Finegan, 2004].

Therefore, Grundy ( 2000, p.74) says that each participant’s contribution


should be relevant to the subject of conversation, for example:

A. How about your score Jane?

B. Not too bad

Here, Jane‟s utterance fulfilled the maxim of relevance, because her answer is
relevant with the question (Grundy, 2000, p.74).

1.2.4 Maxim of Manner

Maxim of manner obligates speaker’s utterance to be perspicuous which is not


to be ambiguous, obscure, or disorderly and unnecessary prolixity. Therefore, each
participant’s contribution should be reasonably direct, that is, it should not be
vague, ambiguous or excessive wordy. For example:

A. What did you think of that drama?

B. I really like of the action of each player.


They can play their role as good as possible. The answer of B is categorized as
maxim of manner, he can answer the question from his partner about the drama
clearly. From the explanation mentioned above, We can conclude that although it
is very difficult to obey and use all of the cooperative principles and its maxims in
uttering or writing the sentences, but it is essential to follow the cooperative
principle in order communication run more effectively (Grice 1975, p.44).

1.3 Fluoting Maxim

If one of the maxims is violated by some utterances and yet we are still
assuming that person is cooperating with us in communication, we can take that
violation as sign that something being said indirectly. This is called flouting
maxim. Flouting is deliberate and apparent violation of maxim.

Grundy(2000, p.78) states that flouting maxims particularly salient way of


getting an addressee to draw an inference and hence recover an implicature, for

example:

John : Where is Meredith ?

Elizabeth : The Control Room or the Science Lab

From the example above, Elizabeth’s answer violated the maxim of Quantity,
Elizabeth does not give as much information as John wanted (Meredith’s exact
location) but instead gave a weaker statement (giving two possible options)

According to (Brown and Yule ,1989. p.32), they state that flouting of maxim
is result of the speaker conveying in addition to the literal meaning which is
conversational implicate. A speaker who makes it clear that they are not following
the conversational maxims is said to be flouting the maxims and this too gives rise
to an implicature. That is, the addressee understands the speaker flouted the
maxims for a reason and infers further meaning from this breach of convention.
Here are some examples, they are:

1. Flouting Maxim of Quality

A: Tehran‟s in Turkey, isn‟t it, teacher?

B: And London‟s in Armenia, I suppose

Implicature: Tehran is not in Turkey

B‟s statement is flouting the maxim of quality because speaker B gives


information which is not match with the actual fact but B still seems to be
cooperative. B gives the untrue statement to B in order to make A to introspect that
his statement is not correct. B‟s utterance suggests that A‟s is absurdly incorrect.

2. Flouting Maxim of Quantity

“War is War”

Implicature: Terrible things happen in war. That‟s it‟s nature and there‟s no
use lamenting that tragedy.

The statement above flouts the maxim of quantity since the information does
not give clear contribution and it is not informative as required. The statement
above suggests that all the Wars that occur in anywhere at any time, they are all
same. Wars causes terrible thing.
3. Flouting Maxim of Relation

A: Susan can be such a cow sometimes!

B: Lovely weather, isn‟t it?

Implicature: B finds A‟s comment inappropriate (for some reason or other)

B‟s utterance might implicates that B should not say it in the inappropriate
circumstances. B possibly suggests “Hey watch out, Susan is standing behind you”

4. Flouting Maxim of Manner

A: Let's get the kids something.

B: OK, but not I-C-E C-R-E-A-M.

Implicature: B strictly forbids the kids to eat icecream

A is going out of their way to be a bit obscure, spelling out the words rather
than simply saying them. A deliberately flouts maxim of manner that B can infer
that there must be a special reason for her being so uncooperative (e.g. Mary does
not want the kids to complain that they're being denied a treat)
1.4 Implicature.

A mutual understanding is inevitably needed by a speaker and a hearer in order


to construct a good communication. Understanding an utterance syntactically and
semantically is not sufficient since the meaning of utterance is not only stated but it
is also implied.

Gazdar( 1979) defines Implicature is anything that is inferred from an utterance


but that is not a condition for the truth of utterance. Implicature is Grice‟s term for
what a speaker does not say but rather communicates, suggests, implies, etc, in
virtue of saying what he does. It also refers to the fact of something‟s being so
communicated.

States the contribution of notion of implicature is that it provide some explicit


account of how it is possible to mean (in some general sense) more than what is
actually „said‟( more than what is literally expressed by the conventional sense of
linguistic expression uttered) (Gazdar, 1979).

Levinson (1981, p.98) adds the notion of implicature promises to bring the gap
between what is literally said and what is actually said. In the Gricean model, the
bridge from what is said (the literal content of the uttered sentence determined by
its grammatical structure with the reference of indexicals resolved) to what is
communicated is built through implicature.

Adds that implicature is a primary example of more being communicated than


is said but in order for them to be interpreted, some basic cooperative principle
must first be assumed to be in operation. Furthermore, Grice as quoted by
Levinson (1992, p.97) explains that the term of implicature to be a general cover
term to stand in contrast to what is said or expressed by the truth condition of
expression, and to include all kinds of pragmatics (Levinson, 1981, p.97) .

1.5. Types of Implicatures

Implicatures can be classified into two ways, according to whether they depend
on (a) the CP and its maxims, or (b) a particular context (Grice, 1975; Gabrielatos
, 2002: 30-52).

1.5.1. Classification According to the Cooperative Principle

1.5.1.1 Conventional Implicatures

This research only focuses on the conversational implicature since the


conversational implicature can be extracted by calculating the maxim of
conversation.

Grice (1975, p.26) states Conversational Implicature is triggered by “certain


general features of discourse” rather than by the conventional meaning of a
specific word. These features are the following: (i) linguistic exchanges are
governed by the Cooperative Principle (CP), the content of which is detailed in the
four Maxim of Conversation and their submaxims; (ii) when one of the participants
of the exchange seems not to follow the Cooperative Principle, his or her partner(s)
will nevertheless assume that, contrary to appearances, the principle is observed at
some deeper level. Working out a Conversational Implicature. The hearer will rely
on the following data:
1. The conventional meaning of the words used, together with the identity of an
references that may be involved.

2. The CP and its maxims.

3. The context, linguistic or otherwise, of the utterance.

4. Other items of background knowledge.

5. The fact (or supposed fact) that all relevant items falling under the previous
headings are available to both participants and both participants know or assume
this to be the case(Grice 1975, p.26).

Grice introduces a distinction between two types of conversational Vimplicature:


Generalized Implicature and Particularized Implicatures.

1.5.1.2 Non-Conventional Implicatures

These implicatures are called conversational implicatures and they are not
part of the conversational meaning of linguistic expressions. Hs need to use
available clues to work out the non-conventional implicatures of Ss (Grice, 1975:
50, Levinson, 1983). Implicit meaning is inferred from the obvious flouting of a
conversational maxim in combination with assumed adherence to the CP ( cf.
Verschueren, 1999: 33-34; Carston, 2004).

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