1. The Co-operative Principle
Lecture 4
The Co-operative Principle

2. Exercise 1
What might the second speaker mean in each of the following dialogues?
(a) Yao: Do you like my new hat?
Fang: It’s pink!
(b) Maggie: Coffee?
James: It would keep me awake
all night.

3. (c) Linda: Have you finished the
student evaluation forms
and the reading lists?
Jean: I’ve done the reading lists.
(d) Bill: Are you going to Steve’s
barbecue?
Terry: Well, Steve’s got those
dogs now.

4. (e) Annie: Was the dessert any good?
Mike: Annie, cherry pie is cherry
pie.

5. KEY (possible paraphrases):

6. Exercise 1
What might the second speaker mean in each of the following dialogues?
(a) Yao: Do you like my new hat?
Fang: It’s pink!
I don’t like your hat.

7. Exercise 1
What might the second speaker mean in each of the following dialogues?
(b) Maggie: Coffee?
James: It would keep me awake
all night.
(b) I won’t have some coffee.

8. (c) Linda: Have you finished the
student evaluation forms
and the reading lists?
Jean: I’ve done the reading lists.
(c) I haven’t done the evaluation forms.

9. (d) Bill: Are you going to Steve’s
barbecue?
Terry: Well, Steve’s got those
dogs now.
(d) I don’t think I’m going to Steve’s
barbecue.

10. (e) Annie: Was the dessert any good?
Mike: Annie, cherry pie is cherry
pie.
(e) No, the dessert was pretty boring.

11. There appear to be many ways of saying ‘no’
There appear to be many ways of saying ‘no’. Yet no or not did not appear in any of the original responses. One can even draw different inferences from the same utterances. These kinds of inferences or conversational implicatures (会话含义), seem to be less ‘straightforward’ than those based on entailment or presupposition.

12. Exercise 2
Please see a different utterance from the first speaker, does the meaning remain the same? Think about the pragmatic paraphrases for each dialogue.
(a) Virginia: Try the roast pork.
Mary: It’s pink!
(b) Maggie: We went to see The Omen last
night but it wasn’t very scary.
James: It would keep me awake
all night.

13. (c) Linda: You look very pleased with
yourself.
Jean: I’ve done the reading lists.
(d) Bill: His garden looks awful.
Terry: Well, Steve’s got those
dogs now.

14. (e) Annie: I thought the pie would
cheer you up.
Mike: Annie, cherry pie is cherry
pie.

15. KEY:
(a) I’m not having the roast pork.
(b) I think The Omen is scary.
(c) I’m pleased with myself, because
I’ve done the reading lists.
(d) Steve’s dogs have wrecked the
garden.
(e) It takes more than cherry pie to
cheer me up.

16. The context provided by the previous utterance can lead to a quite different implicature in each case.

17. Exercise 3
Now look at dialogues (a), (b) and (e) in exercise 1. How do you think the first speaker would interpret the second speaker’s response if you had following extra information.
(a) Pink is Fang’s favorite color and Yao knows this.

18. (b) James has to stay up all night to study for an exam and Maggie knows this.
(e) Mike loves cherry pie. As far as he’s concerned, no one can ruin a cherry pie, and Annie knows this.

19. But how to achieve this level of meaning?
Most people would now interpret the responses as ‘yes’. Drawing the appropriate implicature can require a considerable amount of shared knowledge between the speaker and the hearer.
But how to achieve this level of meaning?

20. Grice suggests that there is a set of over-arching assumptions guiding the efficient and effective conduct of conversation. All speakers, regardless of their cultural background, adhere to a basic principle governing conversation which he terms the co-operative principle (合作原则).
合作原则便是要求每一个交谈参与者在整个交谈过程中所说的话符合这一次交谈的目标或方向.

21. Four basic maxims 1 Quantity 量准则: 2 Quality 质准则:
1） Make your contribution sufficiently informative for the current purposes of the conversation.
2） Do not make your contribution more informative than is necessary.
2 Quality 质准则:
1）Do not say what you believe to be false.
2）Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

22. 3 Relevance 关联准则:
Make sure that whatever you say is relevant to the conversation at hand.
4 Manner 方式准则: Do not make your contribution obscure, ambiguous or difficult to understand.
1) avoid obscurity of expression.避免晦涩
2) avoid ambiguity.避免歧义
3) be brief.简单
4) be orderly.有序

23. In short: Sub-consciously or even unconsciously, when
we speak, we generally have something like the
CP in our mind.
We will try to say things which are true, relevant,
as well as informative enough, and in a clear
manner.

24. That is:
In order to converse in a maximally efficient, rational, cooperative way: participants should speak sincerely, relevantly and clearly, while providing sufficient information.
back

25. This view may describe a philosopher’s paradise, but no one actually speaks like that the whole time.
Rather, in most ordinary kinds of talk these principles are oriented to, such that when talk does not proceed according to their specifications (maxims), hearers assume that, contrary to appearances, the principles are nevertheless being adhered to at some deeper level.

26. Quietly Violate
Vs.
Openly Flout

27. Grice makes a distinction between ‘quietly’ violating a maxim and openly flouting a maxim. Violations are ‘quiet’ in the sense that it is not obvious at the time of the utterance that the speaker has deliberately lied, supplied insufficient information, or been ambiguous, irrelevant or hard to understand. In Grice’s analysis, these violations might hamper communication but they do not lead to implicatures.

28. EXAMPLE
Parent: So you like ice-cream, what are your favourite flavors?
Child: Hamburger… fish and chips.

29. Comment:
The child, who has not realized that favorite flavors should be interpreted as ‘favorite flavors of ice-cream’ rather than ‘favorite flavors in general’, has failed to observe the maxim of relevance. Because his irrelevance is not deliberate, we would view this as a violation rather than a flouting of the maxim.

30. Grice listed three possible situations where the cooperative principle can be violated:
(1) The speaker may violate the Cooperative Principle deliberately but without making the hearer realize it. In this case, the speaker is most likely to mislead the hearer. For example, when someone is telling a lie, he violates the Quality Maxim by saying untrue things. But if the hearer does not realize this and assumes that the speaker follows the Cooperative Principle, he will be misled.

31. (2) The speaker may avoid cooperation in an explicit way by telling the hearer that he is unwilling to cooperate If someone asks a question, the hearer can say that he doesn’t want to answer, or he cannot say any more.

32. (3) The speaker may face a dilemma
(3) The speaker may face a dilemma. On the one hand, he wants to hold the quality maxim the present stage requires, while on the other hand, there is a possibility that other maxims will be violated if the quality maxim is held. There is a clash here.

33. What leads to conversational implicatures is a situation where the speaker flouts a maxim. That is, it is obvious to the hearer at the time of the utterance that the speaker has deliberately and quite openly failed to observe one or more maxims.

34. EXAMPLE1
Suppose you were considering Jim for a job that needed good writing skills. You have written to his English teacher asking her to assess his performance in this area. You receive the following reply:
‘Jim has regularly and punctually attended all my classes. All his assignments were handed in on time and very neatly presented. I greatly enjoyed having Jim in my class.’

35. (a) What maxim does the teacher seem to flout?
(b) What implicature would you draw about Jim’s writing skills?
(c) Why do you think the teacher phrased her response this way?

36. Comment:
(a) The teacher’s response appears to flout the maxim of quantity. There is insufficient information about Jim’s writing skills, yet we would assume that as his English teacher, she would have this information.
(b) Most people infer that Jim’s writing skills are not very good even though at no point is this explicitly stated. This is a classic example of ‘damning with faint praise’.

37. (c) The teacher knows that she should give an informative answer to the question (quantity). She also knows that she should only say what is truthful (quality). The teacher does not want to state badly that the student’s performance was not very good. (For example, she might think that Jim will see the reference letter.) At the same time, she does not want to lie. So she makes her response in such a way that the reader can infer this without her having to state it.

38. Exercise 4
In each case below decide which maxim has not been observed.
(a) A: Shall we get something for the kids?
B: Yes. But I veto I-C-E-C-R-E-A-M.
(b) A: The hostess is an awful bore. Don’t you think so?
B: The roses in the garden are beautiful, aren’t they?

39. (c) A: Would you like to come to our party tonight?
B: I’m afraid I’m not feeling so well today.
(d) A: Do you know where Mr. Clark lives?
B: Somewhere in the southern suburbs of the city.

40. KEY
(a) Manner
(b) Relevance
(c) Quality
(d) Quantity

41. Figures of speech 1. Queen Victoria was made of iron.
2. A: Teheran’s in Turkey isn’t it?
B: And London’s in Armenia I suppose.
3. War is war.
4. Either John will come or he won’t
5. I do think Mrs Jenkins is an old windbag, don’t you?
Huh, lovely weather for March, isn’t it?
6. Miss Singer produced a series of sound corresponding closely to the score of an aria from Rigoletto.

42. Characteristic properties of CP
1. John has 3 apples.
? But John doesn’t have 2 apples.
2. “You are the cream in my coffee.”(对听话人的恭维，违反了质准则)
“But I’m afraid I don’t quite like cream in my coffee.”
1. Cancellable or defeasible

43. John’s a machine. …… 2. undeterminable John is cold John is efficient
John never stops working ……
2. undeterminable

44. John is a genius. (The fact: John is an idiot.)
John’s a genius/ an exceptionally clever human being/ an enormous intellect/ a big brain….
3. non-detachable: implicature is attached to the semantic content of what is said, not to linguistic form, and therefor implicatures cannot be detached from an utterance simply by changing the words of the utterance for synonyms.

45. 4. Calculable: for every putative implicature it should be possible to construct an argument showing how from the literal meaning or the sense of the utterance on the one hand, and the cooperative principle and the maxims on the other, it follows that an addressee would make the inference in question to preserve the assumption of cooperation.

46. 5. context-dependent
Examples?

47. Deficiency of CP Nature of CP. Relationship between maxims
Motivation. Why flout?
Limited Interpretive ability: particularized implicature
Generalized implicature.
Neo-Griceanism

48. Summary
Unlike presuppositions and entailments, implicatures are inferences that cannot be made from isolated utterances. They are dependent on the context of the utterance and shared knowledge between the speaker and the hearer.
Grice has proposed a way of analyzing implicatures based on the co-operative principle and its maxims of relevance, quality, quantity and manner.

49. Summary
In Grice’s analysis, the speaker’s flouting of a maxim combined with the hearer’s assumption that the speaker has not really abandoned the co-operative principle leads to an implicature.