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Starting the conversation, its participants must keep to certain rules and principles.
Generally, it is called the code. The code is the system of principles, rules and
conventions which regulate the speech behaviour of its participants and are based
on certain categories and criteria.
Principles of communication – are the most general demands of the process of
interaction within a communicative act, taking into account all the members of
communication. Rules of communication – are demands of one of the interactants
(sender or addressee), which must be kept by him throughout the communication.
Conventions of communication – are habits in the communication processes,
certain elements of culture, which can vary without affecting the strategies and
tactics of communication.
2. H. P. Grice’s Principle of Cooperation
The most important principles of interpersonal communication are supposed to be
Cooperative Principle by H. P. Grice and Principle of Politeness described by the
American pragmalinguist G. Leech.
The idea that conversation proceeds according to a principle, known and applied
by all human beings, was first proposed in a limited form by the American
philosopher and logician Paul Grice (1975), who put forward what he described as
the Cooperative Principle, which he based on the philosophical principle by
Immanuel Kant. Language users tacitly agree to cooperate by making contribution
to the conversation to further it in the desired direction. According to Grice’s
principle, we interpret language on the assumption that its sender is simultaneously
obeying 4 maxims (maxima (Latin) – a general rule). We assume he or she intends:
- to be true;
- to be brief;
- to be relevant;
- to be clear.
3. Conversational Implicatures.
Conversational implicatures are pragmatic inferences: unlike entailments and
presuppositions, they are not tied to the particular words and phrases in an
utterance but arise instead from contextual factors and the understanding that
conventions are observed in conversation. The theory of conversational
implicatures is attributed to Paul Herbert Grice, who observed that in conversations
what is meant often goes beyond what is said and that this additional meaning is
inferred and predictable. As an illustration of what Grice was talking about,
consider the sentence in (1).
(1) John ate some of the cookies.
The sentence in (1) expresses the proposition that John ate a portion of the cookies
and is true just in case it corresponds to the outside world. Intuitively, all of the
cookies still constitutes a portion of the cookies. So, the sentence in (1) is true even
if in the outside world John ate all of the cookies. However, something interesting
happens when this sentence is uttered in a conversation like (2).
(2) A: “John ate some of the cookies”
B: “I figured he would. How many are left?”
It is clear from (2) that A conveys the literal meaning of the sentence in (1), i.e., its
semantic content. It is equally clear that A implies—or at least B infers—the
proposition expressed by (3).
(3) John didn’t eat all of the cookies
You might suspect that what the word some really means is something like a
portion but not all, so that the sentence in (1) literally means that John ate a portion
but not all of the cookies and (1) entails (3). Let me show you that this is not the
case by comparing the sentences in (4).
(4) a. John ate some of the cookies;
# in fact, he ate none of the cookies
b. John ate some of the cookies;
in fact, he ate all of the cookies
In (4a), I cannot follow the sentence John ate some of the cookies with the
sentence in fact, he ate none of the cookies because the second sentence contradicts
the first sentence. In other words, there is no way in which the world could
correspond to both sentences simultaneously. However, no such contradiction
arises 2 in (4b) and the two sentences are mutually consistent. This proves that (1)
does not entail (3). If it did, there would be a contradiction. That leaves us with an
intriguing puzzle. The meaning of (3) is not part of the literal meaning of (1) and
yet it is implicated by the utterance of (1). It is a systematic inference by the
addressee, one the speaker does not try to discourage and therefore must intend.
We note this inference using the symbol
+>, illustrated in (5).
(5) John ate some of the cookies
+> John didn’t eat all of the cookies
This inference obtains through a special reasoning process, one that relies on our
understanding of the conventions of communicative exchanges—or conversations.
Let’s assume the speaker and addressee are in some sense cooperating in this
exchange to make it smoother and beneficial to both. The speaker utters the
sentence in (5) and in so doing conveys its literal meaning. The speaker (in the
spirit of cooperation) is being as informative as he can in the exchange and the
addressee (assuming he is being cooperative) believes this.
The addressee reasons that if the speaker had known John ate all the cookies, he
would have said so. Since the speaker did not say so, then he must know otherwise.
In other words, the speaker must know that John didn’t eat all of the cookies. So
the addressee infers—from what the speaker said, from what the speaker didn’t
say, and from the way in which cooperative exchanges take place—that John
didn’t eat all of the cookies.
4. Robin Lakoff’s first theory of Politeness.
Robin Lakoff was associated in the late 1960s with the development of a semantic
based model of generative grammar commonly refer to as ‘generative semantics’
and with the possible integration of speech act theory into generative models of
language. The positive impact of Grice’s cooperative principle has shifted Lakoff’s
linguistic interests in the direction of Gricean Pragmatics. At the same time, she
became increasingly involved in the American feminist movement of the late
1960s and 1970s which led her to the publication of language and gender entitled
“Language on Women’s Place.” Here politeness has got a prominent place.
Rule one (Be clear) is really the Grecian CP in which she renames the rules of
conversation. This maxim is dominated by the rules of politeness. CP simply
means that when people engaged in conversation they will say something suitable
at that point of the development of the talk. When speaking, our talk exchanges do
not normally consist of a succession of disconnected remarks. They are
cooperative efforts. Each participant recognizes common purposes at each stage. In
general, participants are expected to follow the principles, which are labeled the
cooperative principle. Rules two (Be Polite) consists of a sub set of three rules: (1)
don’t impose, (2) give options, (3) make A feel good – be friendly. These rules are
deceptively concise, but they are actually complex because language provides
multiple forms for expressing them. For example passive construction such as
“Dinner is served” is more polite than a direct question “Would you like to eat?”
The first sentence is in compliance with Rule one, that is, avoid instructing into the
addressee’s wants or needs and is therefore interpersonally distancing. In Rule two
(give options) speaker can use hedges and mitigate expressions that allow learners
to form and hold their own opinions. Speaker can provide hearers with options to
responds either affirmatively or negatively as in “I guess it’s time to leave” or “It’s
time to leave, isn’t it?” Rule three (make A feel good – be friendly) is the most
variable in terms of cultural meanings.
It implies that co-participants share similar models and norms for behavior and that
they evaluate speech accordingly to the same presupposed notions. In short,
Lakoff’s pragmatic competence can thus be represented schematically in the
diagram below:
5. Positive and negative politeness.
In sociolinguistics and conversation analysis (CA), politeness strategies are speech
acts that express concern for others and minimize threats to self-esteem ("face") in
particular social contexts.
Positive Politeness Strategies
Positive politeness strategies are intended to avoid giving offense by highlighting
friendliness. These strategies include juxtaposing criticism with compliments,
establishing common ground, and using jokes, nicknames, honorifics, tag
questions, special discourse markers (please), and in-group jargon and slang.
For instance, a popular (if sometimes controversial) feedback strategy is the
feedback sandwich: a positive comment before and after a criticism. The reason
this strategy is often criticized in management circles is because it is, in fact, more
of a politeness strategy than a useful feedback strategy.