maxims

[George Lakoff]

At 3:13 PM -0800 2/9/99, OLGA at HUMNET.UCLA.EDU 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

Eleanor Ochs noted, starting back in the early 70's, that Gricean maxims
are not universal and are different in Samoan. Many linguists travelling to
Mexico have noticed that they are different there too. And Robin Lakoff (in
Language and Woman's Place) observed in 1974 that differences in the
pragmatics of politeness between men and women led to different maxims, a
fact that has been discussed in the works of Deborah Tannen since then.

George