Topic 12 - Meaning between the lines (Session A) > Practising Gricean Analysis > Task F

Practising Gricean Analysis

Task F - A bit more information about how the Gricean maxims operate

The examples we have looked at so far have been small-scale and designed to help you spot individual maxims being flouted and infer what is implicated in context. But it is important to remember that in real-life examples things might be a bit more complex:

1. The examples we have looked at so far have tended to be short sentences/utterances. But the domain over which a maxim might operate can be shorter than a sentence/utterance and sometimes longer than a sentence.

2. One utterance or stretch of text might break more than one maxim at the same time.

3. One maxim might be broken in order to preserve another (for example you might break the manner maxim to avoid saying something you think is untrue, and so uphold the quality maxim).

4. Similarly, a maxim might be broken in order to preserve politeness (indeed, Grice himself suggested politeness as another possible candidate for being a conversational maxim). We will examine politeness as a separate phenomenon in session B.

5. When an implicature that follows from the flouting of a maxim is spelled out, there is bound to be some variation between one person's account and another's because different people are bound to choose different words and grammatical structures. This is bound to result in some interpretative variability. But it is also important to note that the variability will usually be within a rather narrow range.

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