Infringing the maxims
Obviously, these maxims are frequently not observed. Grice considers four ways in which a speaker may fail to observe a maxim. First, a maxim may be violated, as for example when one deliberately sets out to mislead (in violation of the first maxim of Quality), to confuse or to bore (violation of various Manner maxims). Second, one may simply opt out of the Cooperative Principle, for example by saying ‘I can’t say more, my lips are sealed’, in order to avoid divulging a secret. Thirdly, one may be faced by a clash, for example if it was impossible to fulfil the informativity maxim without infringing the evidentiary one (see (11) below).
The last, and most important category of non-observance of the maxims is maxim-flouting. This is where the speaker exploits an obvious infringement of one of the maxims in order to generate an implicature. Flouting is the origin of the implicated meanings conveyed in (8)–(10) above. In all these sentences, the maxim of Relevance is obviously flouted to varying degrees: most flagrantly in (8) and (10); less so in (9). These infringements of the maxim are meaningful: it is by assuming that the speaker is still adhering to the Cooperative Principle on a higher level in (8)–(10) that the hearer is able to extract the implications intended by the speaker. For example, B’s reply in (8) concerns a completely different topic to that of A’s question. In replying with information about reading cereal packets, B seems clearly to be disobeying the maxim of Relevance. How does A interpret this? Grice articulates A’s dilemma as follows:
On the assumption that the speaker is able to fulfill the maxim and to do so without violating another maxim (because of a clash), is not opting out, and is not, in view of the blatancy of his performance, trying to mislead, the hearer is faced with a minor problem: How can his saying what he did say be reconciled with the Cooperative Principle? (Grice 1989: 30)
The solution to this ‘minor problem’ is to assume that B is implying the answer to the question rather than saying it outright. Assuming that he is still adhering to the Cooperative Principle, A can make B’s remark relevant by inferring the answer to the question from it by appeal to general principles of world-knowledge: if B hasn’t even read the back of the cereal packet, it is hardly likely that he would have read Sebald; therefore, B may reasonably be taken to be implicating that the answer to the question is ‘no’. B is therefore exploiting the maxim of Relevance in order to generate the implication which answers A’s question.
QUESTION Sentences (9) and (10) also involve infringements of the maxim of Relevance. Describe the steps A could apply in reasoning in order to extract the correct implication.
Another case of maxim-flouting is the following (Grice 1989: 154–155). A is planning a trip with B to southern France. Both know that A wants to see his friend C, as long as doing so wouldn’t involve too great a detour from their original itinerary. This is the context for the following exchange:
Grice glosses this (ibid.) by noting that there is no reason to suppose that B is opting out of the conversation: the Cooperative Principle, in other words, should still be assumed to be active. However, his answer is, as he well knows, less informative than A needs. The first maxim of Quantity (‘make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purposes of the exchange’) has therefore been infringed. But A can explain this infringement by supposing that B is simply avoiding an infringement of a different maxim, the second maxim of Quality, ‘do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence’. In this situation, B has chosen the reply which gives the most information of which he is capable, and A can extract the implication that B is unaware of C’s exact address.
QUESTION Consider each of the Gricean maxims, and describe ways in which their infringement could generate implicatures. Are some maxims more likely to be infringed meaningfully than others?
