maxims

[Jiansheng Guo]

Similar to Ochs' and Lokoff's findings, the recent report by Penelope Brown
of "lies" in Tzeltal in the context of child discipline and control also
finds conventional violation of the maxism of quality (e.g., Stop crying, or
that woman will steal you away forever).

However, when critiquing Gricean maxisms, we have to be very careful about what
the Gricean maxisms were intended for.  As Levinson explained in his 1983
Pragmatics book, they have nothing to do with people's actual behavior, but
rather, the fundamental underlying assumptions interlocutors hold in
communication.  In his example,
A: Where's Bill?
B: There's a yellow VW outside Sue's house.

B has obviously violated the relevance and quantity maxisms in the literally
meanings of the answer.  But B has given a very relevant answer and A would
have the same view.  And the mechanism that enables us and also A to see B's
answer as good is the essence of the Gricean Maxims, namely, we all have the
fundamental assumption about human communication that people observe these
maxisms in communication.  And these assumptions force interactants to
figure out the utterer's intention, or the pragmatic meaning.

Following this line of reasoning, a genuine critique of Gricean maxisms has
to be in a community, genre, or context, where the communicative assumptions
are that when people communicate, they do the opposite of the Gricean maxism
and all interactants will infer meaning from these assumptions.  According to
this criterion, the fact politician and lawyers constant lie does not
constitute counter example of Gricean Maxisms, since the listeners have to
hold Gricean maxisms in order for the politicians and lawyears to convince them.
If not, whatever they say would be only self-defeating.

Thus, we should differentiate people's behavior in violating Gricean maxims
on the one hand, and the situations (society, genre, context, etc.) where
Gricean maxims do not work, on the other.

Guo

Jiansheng Guo
School of Psychology
Victoria University
Wellington
New Zealand