Курсовая работа: Pragmatics: rules of conversation

Implication: B has not provided enough information – B did not say the exact address.

Extreme examples of a flouting of the first maxim of Quantity are provided by utterences of patent tautologies like Women are women and War is war.[7] They are totally noninformative according to the first maxim of Quantity and cannot be infringe it in any conversational context. But they are informative at the level of what implicated, and the hearer’s identification of their informative content at this level is dependent on his ability to explain the speaker’s selection ofthis particular patent tautology.

Ib. A flouting of the second maxim of Quantity.

4. A: Where’s Meredith?

B: The control room or the science lab.

Implication: B doesn’t know which of the two places Meredith is.

5. A: Excuse me–how much is this screwdriver?

B: $9.95. The saw is $39.50, and the power drill there on the table is $89.00.

Implication: B provides unnecessary additional information (marketers and salespeople often violate this rule in order to increase sales).

II. Examples in which the first maxim of quality is flouted.

1. Irony:

a) A is a good friend!

Implication: A betrays the speaker, and audience knows it.

b) Don’t be silly. I love working 80 hours a week with no vacation.

A: A lot of people are depending on you.

B: Thanks, that really takes the pressure off.

Implication: By saying something clearly untrue, B is implying that the opposite is true (sarcasm). The true meaning being expressed here is probably more like “That really puts a lot of pressure on me” and perhaps, by extension, “Stop pressuring me.”

2. Metaphor:

a) You are the cream in my coffee

Implication: The speaker is attributing to his audience some feature or features in respectof which the audience resembles the mentioned substance.

It is possible to combine metaphor and irony by imposing on the hearer two stages og interpretation.

You are the cream in my coffee – can be interpreted as ‘You are my pride and joy’, or, as irony interpretant, ‘You are my bane.’

3. Meiosis

Grice has such an example of meiosis, resulting from flouting the maxim of quality:

‘He was a little intoxicated’

Implication: This man is known to have broken up all the furniture.

4. Hyperbole. Usually in metaphor the second maxim of Quality is flouted.

Example: Everybody likes ice-cream.

Implication: it is clear, that there are people, who don’t like ice-cream.