Paul Grice: Theory of Conversational

Implicature

Presented to:Dr. Muhammad Iqbal ButtPresented by:Muhammad Sajjad Raja

PAUL GRICE• Grice proposed that many aspects of “speaker’s meaning” result from the assumption that the participants in a conversation are cooperating in an attempt to reach mutual goals – or at least are pretending to do so!

• Grice’s aim was to understand how “speaker’s meaning” rises from “sentence meaning” ( Speaker meaning = Sentence meaning + What is implicated)

• Conversation is a cooperative behaviour, and therefore proceeds by rules of cooperative conduct.

• Grice called this the Cooperative Principle.

The Cooperative Principle.

“Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged”

The cooperative principle has four sub-parts, four rules or maxims that people involved in conversations tend to respect:

1.The maxim of quality

2.The maxim of quantity

3.The maxim of relevance

4.The maxim of manner

(1)The maxim of quality (“Tell the truth”)

Do not say what you believe to be false.

Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

(2) The maxim of quantity (“Say just as much as is necessary”)

Make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purposes of the exchange.Do not make the contribution more informative than is required.

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(3) The maxim of relation / relevance (“Stick to the point”)

Make your contributions relevant.

(4) The maxim of manner (“Be clear”)

Avoid obscurity.Avoid ambiguity.Be brief.Be orderly.

Grice was not acting as a prescriptivist when he stated these maxims.

He observed the difference between “what is said” and “what is meant” to show that people actually do follow these maxims in conversation.

An example on the maxim of quantity:

Mum: Did you finish your homework?Pat: I finished my algebra.Mum: Well, get busy and finish your English, too!

The child did not say that her English homework is not done, nor did she imply it.Nevertheless her mother is entitled to draw this conclusion, based on the combination of what the child actually said and the cooperative principle.

An example on the maxim of relation/relevance:

The maxim of relevance is behind the implications of this letter of recommendation (a classic type of example).Dear Colleague,Dr John Jones has asked me to write a letter on his behalf. Let me say that Dr Jones is unfailingly polite, is neatly dressed at all times, and is always on time for his classes.Yours sincerely,Prof. H.P. SmithThe person reading this letter assumes that all the relevant information will be included; so the maxims of quantity and relevance lead one to suspect that this is the best that the professor can say.

Maxims may be:Observed

Ex: John got into Columbia and won a scholarship.I went to the supermarket and I bought some sugar.

“and” means that both linked events occurred, but implicates also temporal progression due to the maxim of manner: be orderly.

Maxims may be:Violated (because of a clash with another maxim)

A: Where does Dave live?B: Somewhere in the South of FranceThis response infringes the first maxim of quantity, but does so in order to avoid violating the second maxim of quality. What is the implicature?

Maxims may be:Flouted

E.g.: A: Will you come out on a dinner date with me?B: Hasn’t the weather been lovely recently?

B flouts the maxims of quantity and relevance.

Entailment is the relationship between two sentences where the truth of one (A) requires the truth of the other (B).For example, The sentence (A) The president was assassinated. entails (B) The president is dead. Notice also that if (B) is false, then (A) must necessarily be false. To show entailment, we must show that (A) being true forces (B) to be true, or, equivalently, that (B) being false forces (A) to be false.

Entailment and Implicature

The linguistic meaning of what is said+

The information from the context (shared knowledge)+

The assumption that the people speaking are observing the cooperative principle

=Conversational implicature

Implicature interpretation requires both Speaker and Hearer to be collaborative

Ex:A. I got an A on that exam.B. And I’m Queen Marie of Rumania.

A. Where did you go?B. Out.

A: Where does Arnold live?B: Somewhere in southern California.

Types of implicatures

Implicature

conventional conversational

generalized particularized

Conventional implicatures

• encoded in the lexicon or grammar

• not based on cooperative principle or maxims

Ex:

• not dependent on context for their interpretationsGeorge is short but brave. (contrast)

Sue and Bill are divorced (conjunction)

He jumped on his horse and rode away. (sequence)

I dropped the camera and it broke (consequence)

Coversational implicatures

• Inferred via the cooperative principle or maxims (observed, violated or flouted)

Ex:

A: I am out of petrol.

B: There is a garage around the corner.

Generalized conversational implicatures• independent of the context

Ex.:

1. IndefinitesA car ran over John’s foot. (not John’s car / not the

speaker’s car)

the speaker is assumed to follow the maxim of quantity, if he

wanted to be more specific he would have said my car or

John’s car

2. Scalar implicatures communicated by choosing a word expressing a value from a scale (quantity, frequency, etc.)

I’m studying linguistics and I’ve completed some ofthe required courses (not all)

If the scale is all, most, many, some, few...., the use of some implicates that all the higher items in the scale are to be considered negative.

Particularized conversational implicatures

Ex.:

Rick: Hey, coming to the party tonight?

Tom: My parents are visiting. (flouting relevance)

Ann: Where are you going with the dog?

Sam: To the V.E.T. (flouting manner)

• dependent on a specific context

Bert: Do you like ice-cream?

Ernie: Is the the Pope Catholic? (flouting relevance)

A hedge is a mitigating word or sound used to lessen the impact of an utterance. Typically, they are adjectives or adverbs, but can also consist of clauses. It could be regarded as a form of euphemism.Examples:1.There might just be a few insignificant problems we need to address. (adjective)2.The party was somewhat spoiled by the return of the parents. (adverb)3.I'm not an expert but you might want to try restarting your computer. (clause)

Hedging Maxims

If the speaker only says that “they are married” and they do not know for sure if they are married, they may violate the maxim of quality since they say something that they do not know to be true or false. Nevertheless, by adding Hedges may intentionally or unintentionally be employed in both spoken and written language since they are crucially important in communication. Hedges help speakers and writers indicate more precisely how Gricean maxims (expectations of quantity, quality, manner, and relevance) are observed in assessments. For example,1.All I know is smoking is harmful to your health. In (1), it can be observed that information conveyed by the speaker is limited by adding all I know. By so saying, the speaker wants to inform that she is not only making an

assertion but observing the maxim of quantity as well.

they told me that, the speaker wants to confirm that they are observing the conversational maxim of quality.1.I am not sure if all of these are clear to you, but this is what I know. The above example shows that hedges are good indications the speakers are not only conscious of the maxim of manner,1.They told me that they are married. but they are also trying to observe them.

1.By the way, you like this car?

By using by the way, what has been said by the speakers is not relevant to the moment in which the conversation takes place. Such a hedge can be found in the middle of speakers’ conversation as the speaker wants to switch to another topic that is different from the previous one. Therefore, by the way functions as a hedge indicating that the speaker wants to drift into another topic or to stop the previous topic.