Курсовая работа: Pragmatics: rules of conversation

(b) A: How did Harry face in court the other day?

B: Oh, he got fine.

B’s contribution is what required from A’s utterance. However, still B will be condemned asa being a wrong informer, if then, for example, Harry gets life sentence.

3. Be truthful (Maxim of quality).

Or say things believed to be true and don’t say ones believed to be false.

Examples: (a) John has two PhDs.

Implicates: that I know that John has, and have adequate evidence that he has.

A: Should I buy my son this new sports car?

B: I don't know if that's such a good idea. He's totaled two cars since he got his license last year.

vs.B: No, he seems like he'd be a bad driver.

4. Be clear (Maxim of manner)

Avoid unnecessary prolixity

Avoid ambiguity.

Be brief.

Be orderly.

Examples: A: Where was Alfred yesterday?

B: He went to the store and bought some whiskey.

B is being perspicuous to A. He gives clear response to A.

A: What did you think of that movie?

B: I liked the creative storyline. The ending was really a surprise!

vs.B: It was interestingly done, sir.

Paul Grice admitted that the CP and Maxims of conversation could be applied not only in talk exchange, but also in sphere of transaction.[] He discovered that many people act according to these principles because they were taught to act in such a way and they did not lost this habit.

He tried to find a basis for such behavior and found out that ‘standard type of conversational practice not merely as something that all or most do in fact follow but as something that it is reasonable for us to follow, that we should not abandon.’[8]

Talk exchanges have certain features that jointly distinguish cooperative transactions:

1. The participants have some common immediate aim, even though their ultimate aims may be independent and even in conflict. In characteristic talk exchange, there is a common aim even if , as in an over-the-wall chat, it is a second –order one, namely ,that each partly should, for the time being, identify himself with the transitory conversational interests of the other.

2. The contributions of the participants should be dovetailed, mutually dependent.

3. There is some sort of understanding (which may be explicit but which is often tacit) that, other things being equal, the transaction should continue in appropriate style unless both parties are agreeable that it should terminate. [7]

In spite of that no one ever follows to all the maxims far all time, we might even do not need to, because as we can see, we may rely on implicature, to get the point of our addresser’s idea.

2.2 Flouting the cooperative principle