Are the maxims universal?
If it is accepted that maxims like those formulated by Grice underlie many types of conversation in English, it is obviously an important question whether the same is true for other languages. The universality of the Gricean maxims has been strongly questioned by Keenan (1976). Keenan says that we can readily imagine situations even in our own society which do not observe the first maxim of Quantity, which stipulates that hearers are to make their contributions ‘as informative as is required for the current purposes of the exchange’. As she points out, there are many situations where it would be indiscreet, impolite or unethical to be informative.
Situations of professional confidence like those involving lawyers, doctors, spokespeople, accountants, etc. are only the most obvious examples where ‘be discreet’ seems a more appropriate description of the maxims governing conversation than ‘be informative’.
Having demonstrated the lack of applicability of Quantity (i) in certain types of familiar Western context, Keenan goes on to claim that societies exist where, in general, the maxim ‘be informative’ does not hold at all. One such society, Keenan claims, is Madagascar, where ‘the expectation that speakers will satisfy informational needs is not a basic norm’ (Keenan 1976: 218). Information in traditional Malagasy society is, according to Keenan, characteristically withheld – especially if the information in question is important. Keenan derives this tendency not to inform from certain large-scale features of traditional Malagasy social organization:
New information is a rare commodity. Villages are composed of groups of kinsmen whose genealogical backgrounds and family lives are public knowledge. Their day-to-day activities are shaped to a large extent by the yearly agricultural cycle. Almost every activity of a personal nature (bathing, play, courtship, etc.) takes place under public gaze. Information that is not already available to the public is highly sought after. If one gains access to new information, one is reluctant to reveal it. As long as it is known that one has that information and others do not, one has some prestige over them. (Keenan 1976: 218)
Keenan claims that this unwillingness to inform fits into a wider pattern in Madagascar, which includes a general reluctance both to identify individuals explicitly, and to make explicit statements about either present or future. ‘It would be misleading’, she continues, ‘to conclude that the maxim “Be informative” does not operate at all in a Malagasy community’:
We would not be justified in proposing the contrary maxim ‘Be uninformative’ as a local axiom. Members of this speech community do not regularly expect that interlocutors will withhold necessary information. Rather, it is simply that they do not have the contrary expectation that in general interlocutors will satisfy one another’s informational needs. (Keenan 1976: 224)
The Gricean maxims must not, therefore, be seen as universal principles governing the entire range of human conversational behaviour: conversational maxims seem to vary situationally and cross-culturally, and the set of maxims operative in any given culture is a matter for empirical investigation.
Many scholars working in the tradition of Gricean analysis are commit ted to the universality of the maxims and therefore need to reply to this attempted relativization of them. Kasher (1982), for example, has claimed that Keenan’s observation of apparent violations of the Quantity maxim isn’t a violation at all: Keenan has not, according to Kasher, taken into account the role of cost in the Malagasy speaker’s avoidance of informativeness. In developments of Gricean theory, Kasher states,
a rational speaker opts for a speech act which not only attains his purpose most effectively but also does so at least cost, ceteris paribus. Now, it is up to the speaker himself to determine what counts as a cost and what may be disregarded . . . For Malagasy speakers, commitments should be spared . . . (Kasher 1982: 207)
For Kasher, then, Keenan’s apparent counter-example is nothing of the sort. Malagasy speakers attach high value to the possession of information which their interlocutors do not have. Given these values, the social cost of disclosing information counteracts the maxim of informativeness, and there is no reason to doubt that ‘Be informative’ really is a maxim adhered to – according to their own broader conventions – by Malagasy people.
Keenan might well reply, however, that the reformulation of the maxim in order to take cost into account means that the maxim can never, in fact, be infringed. Grice’s definition of the maxim – ‘make your contribution as informative as is required for the current purposes of the exchange’ and ‘do not make your contribution more informative than is required’ – allows any possible counter-example like Keenan’s to be dismissed by varying the parameter of the requirements of the exchange. Thus, if we include as one of the ‘requirements of the exchange’ the speaker’s desire to avoid cost by not releasing information, the maxim survives intact. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Keenan/Kasher debate, the issues involved illustrate the difficulty of applying Gricean insights, which are derived from idealized reflection on conversation, to real linguistic description.
QUESTION Are Keenan’s Malagasy examples conclusive evidence that the maxims are not universal, or is Kasher’s defence justified? Discuss the issues involved.
