Maxims & Conversational Postulates: How we are "Had"
David Crystal (
Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, p. 378) suggests also that maxims of conversational theory do not apply to parliamentary dialogue.
Other participants or commentators do not assume that speakers are telling the truth, are speaking clearly or with relevance. This may need some clarification. In some ways, debate is like social conversation - people speak in sequence, respond to each other and develop ideas. And outside of occasions when for example British MPs adopt ritual enmities (Prime Minister's Question Time or the presenting of a new draft bill, say), the speakers may follow cooperative rules and observe conversational maxims. But they have other motivations than the success of the conversation - and (in pragmatic terms) may want the exchange not to be successful, that is in coming to an accommodation.
Grice's Maxims
- The maxim of quantity, where one tries to be as informative as one possibly can, and gives as much information as is needed, and no more.
- The maxim of quality, where one tries to be truthful, and does not give information that is false or that is not supported by evidence.
- The maxim of relation, where one tries to be relevant, and says things that are pertinent to the discussion.
- The maxim of manner, when one tries to be as clear, as brief, and as orderly as one can in what one says, and where one avoids obscurity and ambiguity.
Meaning is obtained through inference; it is indirect. Through inference in the context of utterance, making use of our knowledge of language and the world, our memory of past experiences, and abstract, unconscious rules of mental computation, we obtain utterance meaning in different shades:
· explicature (what is explicitly said)
· implicature (what is implied logically from what is said)
· presupposition (what underlies our beliefs in the process of inference)
· illocutionary force (speakers intention) considering propositional attitude, all of which expressible as individual propositions.
--meaning in communication is always subject to different interpretations in different contexts.
Utterance meaning is never static. It is emergent, dynamic, needing to be "negotiated" between the parties involved in the communicative act.
Grice asked...How do we make pragmatic inference? What are the principles in pragmatic inference?
Grice: Logic and Conversation
- The Co-operative Principle (CP)
"Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose and direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged"...PEOPLE ARE TRYING TO HONESTLY COMMUNICATE (we assume this in any conversation).
When we talk to each other, it is assumed that the above principle and maxims are being unconsciously followed by both the talking parties. This assumption makes our communication effective and reliable to a great extent. GRICE FELT THAT THIS WAS A SOCIAL CONVENTION.
- Certainly, we can either ignore the CP or flout the maxims.
- Failing to observe the CP will lead to unwillingness to communicate, cheating, or irrational behavior.
- Examples can be (A) A government official, when stopped by news reporters, openly refuses to answer the questions, (B) As a patient, I may decline to answer the irrelevant questions from the garrulous dentist by pointing to my fully stuffed mouth, (C) A man suffering from mental disorder may talk in an abnormal way, (D) Cheating, which does not need illustration.
Flouting the maxims of conversation ostensibly, yet still observing the CP is a more interesting case, which happens in political communication and advertising VERY often.
- Grice: entailment (logical) versus implicature
- entailment are the logical "constative" utterances (yes/no) that are required to be true by any locution
- implicature is what is logically implied by any utterance based on our assumptions about cooperative conversations and our shared background knowledge and cultural presuppositions.
- manipulation happens by only taking responsibility for what is ENTAILED, while manipulating what is IMPLIED.
Influential power - media
(broadcast, print, new technologies)
While any text may be influenced by the maker's preconceptions and world view, many media texts arise from an explicit intention of promoting given values or attitudes, whether sincerely, because the author believes in them, or cynically, to attract an audience. As students of language, you have no interest in this -
- your concern is the language features in which these attitudes are embodied or expressed. It may be helpful not to think of these preconceptions as "bias"-They are, rather, the speaker's or writer's outlook, assumptions or editorial stance.
- You should be aware that certain media texts proclaim and admit these underlying attitudes - opinion columns or current affairs broadcasts explicitly adopt such a stance. But others, such as reporting, may aspire to neutrality, yet display the author's value systems by choices of lexis or current metaphors. For example:
- Do we read of refugees, economic migrants or asylum seekers?
- Are they bogus, and are they passing through open (or about-to-be-open) floodgates? (How often do you meet floodgates in a literal, rather than metaphorical sense?)
- Are those who resist the state guerrillas, freedom fighters or terrorists?
- Does a writer introduce ideas of legality to confer (dis)approval, so "legal" intoxicants (alcohol, tobacco) are distinguished from those that are illegal, and so referred to as drugs.
Perhaps influential power (Facebook, etc) is less monolithic, but appears in trends and fashions. Look at the FAKE NEWS outlets as examples of this.
Lexis and semantics in the media and the process of NORMALIZATION
Normalization is the process by which meaning is shifted from a pejorative connotation to a neutral one. It utilizes a number of rhetorical devices. From the perspective of pragmatics, the two main devices are:
- Lexical choices reflect shifts in subjective meaning or connotation or contemporary attitudes, so that they carry a sense of approval (approbation) or disapproval (pejoration). They may also be euphemistic, appearing as an acceptable substitute for some word or phrase that the writer or speaker thinks too strong or direct -
- as when the inadvertent killing of soldiers by their own allies or compatriots is "friendly fire", and the killing of civilians is "collateral damage".
- language like this is NORMALIZING
- Political correctness (as a linguistic rather than social attitude) represents an attempt to find neutral terms. While PC language is often a subject for ridicule, it arises from a sensitivity to the connotations or implications of more common forms.
- language like this is NORMALIZING
Pragmatics in the media
- We can apply the theories of pragmatics to language use in the media - but should note some special features of how they work. A simple example might be a political interview, broadcast on radio or television. What the listener or viewer might miss is an understanding of how far the speakers are aware of the wider audience, and how far the questions and answers are, or are not, spontaneous, as the interviewee may have seen them before the interview is recorded.
- coded language is often understood by only a segment of that wider audience
- Another complicating factor is the effect of editing, where an interview is recorded for later broadcast - this can remove the sense context for interpretation.
Pragmatics in politics
These include: (Obama)
· Different types of questions, affirmative sentences, reduced and abrupt, characteristic of colloquial English, elements of the so called “broken syntax” (Rogova, 1975). They are lively, free in form, not completed, often abounding in ellipses, parceling and sometimes preferred by the orator.
o You never gave in. You never gave up. And together we made history.
o That’s the project the American people want us to work on. Together.
· Metaphors. They help the audience catch the connection between what people know and the new information. They help a listener look at the familiar things the other way round. They give a possibility to interpret the new information and to come to a certain conclusion:
o We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service.
· Inversion which removes the informative centre of the utterance and makes it more expressive and emotional:
o We measure progress by the success of our people. By the jobs they can find and the quality of life those jobs offer. By the prospects of a small business owner who dreams of turning a good idea into a thriving enterprise. By the opportunities for a better life that we pass on to our children.
· Reiteration – one of the most preferable rhetorical figures of speech which reveals itself in repetition of identical morphemes, words, sentences, and makes the speech swift, rhythmical, expressive and emotional and in this way strengthens its influence upon the electors. For example,
o What comes of this moment is up to us. What comes of this moment will be determined not by whether we can sit together tonight, but whether we can work together tomorrow.
o Here we deal with syntactic parallelism, accompanied by anaphora, and antithesis. The combination of these means strengthens the impression produced on the addressee.
What’s more, we are the first nation to be founded for the sake of an idea – the idea that each of us deserves the chance to shape our own destiny (anadiplosis). No workers – no workers are more productive than ours (anaphora). Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new (epiphora).
· Alliteration – a special stylistic means aimed at creating additional musical effect produced by the utterance. The words acquire certain intonational significance and attract listeners’ attention.
o Because of a diplomatic effort to insist that Iran meets its obligations, the Iranian government now faces tougher sanctions, tighter sanctions than ever before.
· Antithesis – a widespread stylistic means in speeches of political leaders, conveys contrast of ideas vividly expressed:
o It’ not a matter of punishing their success. It’s about promoting America’s success.
· Epithets – attributive words which make the information more exact, precise, accurate. They help a word or an utterance obtain colorfulness and influence the addressees’ vision of the political and social situation:
o On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.
· Metonymy – a stylistic means with the help of which the necessary word is replaced by another, analogous in meaning. It gives an addressee the possibility to see between lines (Gaines, 1999):
o know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and we are ready to lead once more.
· Hyperbole – intentional exaggeration used by politicians to emphasize ideas and to intensify expressiveness:
o It’s never been harder to save or retire; to buy gas or groceries; and if you put it on a card, they’ve probably raised your rates.
Personification – transference of certain qualities from animate beings to inanimate ones. It makes speech more vivid and concentrates attention on the semantic component of the utterance:
o Now, clean energy breakthroughs will only translate into clean energy jobs if businesses know there will be a market for what they’re selling.
Gradation – a synonymic row of words in which every next element is getting more and more or less and less intensive:
o So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans. I believe we can. And I believe we must.
Polisyndeton is used to make up a rhythmical picture of speech, underlining the significance of every element and strengthening its expressivity:
o And over the next 10 years, with so many baby boomers retiring from our classrooms, we want to prepare 100,000 new teachers in the fields of science and technology and engineering and math.
