A socio-pragmatic comparative study of

2. 13. Conversational Principles 
Work on conversational principles is usually credited to H. P. Grice (1957). Grice, like 
Searle, attempted to face up to the problem of how meaning in ordinary human 
discourse differs from meaning in the precise but limited truth-conditional sense. In 
other words, Grice was interested in explaining the difference between what is said and 

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what is meant. Grice does not assume the position of Alice at the Mad Tea-Party to 
believe that what is said equals what is meant, and vice-versa. He admits that "what is 
said" is what the words mean at their face value, and can often be explained in truth-
conditional terms. "What is meant," however, is the effect that the speaker intends to
produce on the addressee by virtue of the addressee's recognition of this intention. There 
is often a considerable gap between these two types of messages. One of them consists 
of only "explicit meaning," while the other contains the "inexplicit meaning" as well.
The idea behind conversational principles is the assumption that conversation proceeds 
according to a set of principles and maxims which interlocutors assume are being 
followed in the utterances of others (cf. Leech, 1983). These principles and maxims, 
however, are not always adhered to by the interlocutors in a conversation. They are 
sometimes flouted for one purpose or another. 
2. 13. 1. The Cooperative Principle 
To give a reasonable explanation for the process of inferring conversational meanings, 
one could assume that the interactants in a conversation have regard to what Grice 
(1957) calls the cooperative principle: 
"Make your contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it 
occurs, by the accepted purpose of direction of the talk exchange in 
which you are engaged." 
The cooperative principle (CP), stated in its most general terms above, can be expanded 
into four maxims: 
1. Maxim of Quality: Try to make your contribution one that is true, 
specifically:
(a) do not say what you believe to be false; 
(b) do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence; 
2. Maxim of Quantity:
(a) Make your contribution as informative as is required for the 
current purposes of the exchange; 
(b) Do not make your contribution more informative than is 
required; 

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3. Maxim of Relation: Do make your contribution relevant; 
4. Maxim of Manner: Be perspicuous and specifically: 
(a) avoid obscurity, 
(b) 
avoid 
ambiguity, 
(c) be brief, and 
(d) be orderly. 
(cf. Leech and Thomas, 1985) 
Many commentators have assumed that Grice's cooperative principle is built on some 
apriori notion of human benevolence and cooperativeness. They have argued that Grice 
is making some kind of ethical claim about human behavior (cf. Kiefer, 1979; Platt, 
1977, 1982; and Sampson, 1982). But nothing is further from the truth. The cooperative 
principle functions as a device to explain how people arrive at meaning. There is 
certainly no assumption that people are inevitably truthful, informative, and relevant in 
what they say (see Thomas, 1986: chapter 2). In other words, a speaker may sometimes 
maliciously and falsely tell the hearer what he himself does not believe to be true. This 
flouting of a maxim can serve as a good device for leading the addressee toward a 
covert, implied meaning (cf. Grice, 1975). This last kind of explanation of the 
cooperative principle is basic to what Grice called Conversational Implicatures. Leech 
and Thomas (1985: 181) define conversational implicatures as "pragmatic implications 
which the addressee figures out by assuming the speaker's underlying adherence to the 
CP." The blatancy of the flouting of the maxims leads to the generation of a 
conversational implicature.
The cooperative principle has been criticized on two grounds: 
1. The cooperative principle cannot, in itself, explain why people are often so 
indirect in conveying what they mean;
2. It fails to account for what the relationship between sense and force (considering 
non-directive utterances) is. 
It has also been argued that the cooperative principle does not stand up to the evidence 
of real language use. Larkin and O'Malley (1973), for instance, argue that the majority 
of declarative sentences do not have an information bearing function. Keenan (1976) 

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believes that the maxims of the cooperative principle are not universal to language 
because there are linguistic communities to which not all of them apply.