PicoBlog

In what follows, I do my damnedest to make sense of the first work I’ve read on the philosophy of language—I promise my confusion is not for want of trying:

In Studies in the Way of Words, Paul Grice’s project seems to be to describe how there are certain expectations of communication, namely the Cooperative Principle, that, when violated, imply conclusions that are not deducible from a literal interpretation of the words used. Though, perhaps “imply” is the wrong verb to use to describe what Grice describes; he introduces the nomenclature of “implicature” to refer to the process he describes.

What motivates Grice’s definition of the Cooperative Principles and its maxims, as well as the implicature of their obviation? In the second chapter, “Logic and Conversation,” Grice provides a brief overview of the debate between the formalists and the informalists; the formalists’ project is creating an ideal language, so called, that abides perfectly by the devices of philosophical logic such that all sentences are “clear, determinate in truth value, and certifiably free from metaphysical implications. . .”[1] The informalists, by contrast, maintain that “language serves many important purposes besides those of scientific inquiry,”[2] and that there are valid inferences and arguments which are perfectly intelligible to people in natural language. Though Grice states that he is not interested in weighing in on the debate between these two camps, I believe that his project coincides nicely with the informalists.

Essentially, I interpret the Grice’s introduction of the concept of “implicature” to be motivated by the informalist position that natural language abides by certain rules that enable its users to communicate certain conclusions to their interlocutor in a way similar to formal logic. If true, this would render the project of the formalists to be superfluous—natural language is already well-equipped to perform its functions of inference-making and argumentation. Whether an informalist, a formalist, or anything else, how persuasive is Grice that natural language abides by the Cooperative Principle?

Grice sums up the Cooperative Principle as making one’s “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.”[3] He subdivides this principle into four categories, Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Manner, and lists subsidiary maxims under each. For Quantity, its maxims are making one’s contribution as informative as required and not more so; for Quality, one must not say what one believes to be false or that for which you lack sufficient evidence; Relation is simply “be relevant”; and Manner involves avoid ambiguity, obscurity, loquacity, and disorder.

Grice does not merely believe that the Cooperative Principle is something “that all or most do in fact follow but as something that it is reasonable for us to follow”[4] because doing so facilitates “cooperative transactions”[5] between participants, i.e., the purpose of communicating in the first place. Grice goes on to show how the principles and its maxims are disobeyed in distinct ways—violation, opting out, clashing, or flouting—in order to imply certain conclusions. In demonstrating that the Cooperative Principle is exploited, i.e., not obeyed, to convey information that is not explicitly stated, Grice proves two things: first, that the Cooperative Principle is routinely obeyed (otherwise there’d be nothing to abrogate); second, its abrogation is clear to the interlocutors in such a way as to communicate a conclusion that the speaker would rather not state plainly.

Grice provides many examples of the Cooperative Principle being disobeyed in each of the four ways he describes, but I will focus on the two: his first and the use of no sequiturs to socially sanction misbehavior. Grice’s original example is, “Oh quite well, I think; he likes his colleagues, and he hasn’t been to prison yet.”[6] Although the last part seems to be unrelated to the question A has asked B about C’s affinity for his new job at the bank, if this were the case, B would be guilty of violating the “be relevant” maxim of the Cooperative Principle. Therefore, if B is not in violation of this maxim, and C’s absence from prison is relevant to the conversation, then B’s conversational implicatum is that C is dishonest. I find this to be a clean example that supports Grice’s claim that the Cooperative Principle is abided by and that apparent violations thereof imply certain other, unspoken things to conversation participants.

The second example is one in which the Cooperative Principle is not being apparently violated; it’s actually being violated: “A says Mrs. X is an old bag. There is a moment of appalled silence, and then B says The weather has been quite delightful this summer, hasn’t it?” In obviously, intentionally refusing to abide by the Relation category and its associated maxim of relevance, the conversational implicature to A is that his statement is unacceptable, and B will not entertain a conversation on this subject. I have been on both sides of an analogous exchange, and, to Grice’s credit, there is nothing opaque about the interaction: the violation of the Cooperative Principle is blatant, and the reason why, i.e., the conversational implicature, is as clear in the mind of the recipient as it is in the person issuing the implicatum.

To conclude, Grice makes a strong argument for the existence and utility of the Cooperative Principle to facilitating cooperation between participants by providing examples in which its apparent or actual violation communicates unspoken information to participant(s) in the conversation.

[1] Paul Grice, Studies in the Ways of Words, “Logic and Conversation,” 23.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Grice, 26.

[4] Grice, 29.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Grice, 24.

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