maxims

Ellen F. Prince ellen at CENTRAL.CIS.UPENN.EDU
Wed Feb 10 17:07:31 UTC 1999


>At 19:06 9/02/99 -0500, you wrote:
>>>Dear Marta Carretero,
>>>Gricean maxims are regularly violated in informal phatic discourse by
>>>those who perceive their interlocutors to be close to them. They also
>>>seem to be at least in part gender/culture-conditioned, as they reflect
>>>primarily European male discourse.
>>>Olga Yokoyama
>>
>>The whole point of Grice is that the Maxims are *presumed* in any
>>sort of linguistic communication as we know it -- why on earth would
>>anyone ever ask a question if not for the presumption that the
>>addressee's next utterance would be somehow relevant and also non-random
>>with respect to the addressee's beliefs?
>
>By the same logic, there is no logical reason why would one would repeat 2
>or 3 times the same answer to a question, or, in a group, repeat 3 or 4
>times the description of something that has happened.  Nevertheless, that
>is a hallmark of discourse structure in Spanish society.  It hasn´t got to
>do only with exchanging information.  There seems to be more going on that
>gets into social interaction.  There may be something similar going on in
>Mexico, where, as George Lakoff mentioned, linguists have noticed that the
>norms are different as well.

I can't tell whether you're arguing for or against Grice.

If against, the repetitions that you note that have 'no logical reason'
do indeed induce implicatures which are precisely explained by a Gricean
approach. In fact, the whole notion of repetition as marked in any
way PRESUMES a Gricean approach, i.e. that it is a violation of the
Maxim of Quantity. Hard to imagine any other way to even identify it.

For a formal treatment of how to derive non-logical inferences from
repetitions/redundancy, see:

Walker, Marilyn. 1993. Informational redundancy and resource bounds in
dialogue. Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania Ph.D.
dissertation.



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