Grice's Cooperative Principle
Updated 2026-08-13
INTRODUCTION
English translation pending.
CORE DEFINITION
Grice's cooperative principle states that speakers and listeners assume they are cooperating toward a shared communicative goal, and that this assumption licenses four maxims: give the right amount of information, say what you believe to be true, be relevant, and be clear and orderly. The core proposition is that these rules are usually unstated, and that deliberately flouting one generates implicature, the meaning conveyed beyond the literal words. The key qualification is that the maxims are norms rather than laws, and their relative weight varies across cultures.
SCAFFOLDING EFFECT
Reduce cognitive load
- Flouting read: when someone breaks a maxim, ask what meaning the breach is intended to convey. - Message check: audit your own writing for irrelevant detail, unsupported claims, and vague phrasing. - Cultural check: verify whether the other party weights the maxims differently than you do.
Anchor fast decisions
Listeners assume the speaker is cooperating, so an apparent violation cannot be dismissed as noise. To preserve the assumption, the listener infers an additional meaning that makes the utterance cooperative after all. Implicature therefore arises precisely from the breach, which is why literal decoding alone systematically misses what is communicated.
MINIMUM ACTION
In progress 0/1Practice this model in one real situation:
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Source support: Explicit
- en.wikipedia.orghttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_principleverified
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