Grice’s Maxims

Source: Futility Closet

What rules underlie natural conversation? In a lecture at Harvard in 1967, British philosopher H.P. Grice set out to specify them using a mathematical approach, as Euclid had done in plane geometry. First, he said, the participants in a conversation follow a Cooperative Principle:

Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.

Then he derived more specific principles under four headings:

• Quantity

1. Make your contribution as informative as is required.
2. Do not make your contribution more informative…

Click here to read more

The post Grice’s Maxims appeared first on FeedBox.