- Also called:
- H. (Herbert) Paul Grice
- Also called:
- also known as H. (Herbert) Paul Grice
- Born:
- March 13, 1913, Birmingham, England
- Died:
- August 28, 1988, Berkeley, California, U.S. (aged 75)
Paul Grice
Who was Paul Grice?
What is Paul Grice’s implicature theory?
What is the cooperative principle in Paul Grice’s theory?
What are “conventional” implicatures, according to Paul Grice?
Paul Grice was a contemporary British philosopher known primarily for his foundational contributions to pragmatics, the philosophical and linguistic study of rules and conventions underlying communication beyond the literal meanings of spoken words. He also made insightful observations in the fields of ethics, ontology, and ancient Greek philosophy. Grice’s work in the philosophy of language followed upon and augmented the groundbreaking speech act theory of British philosopher J.L. Austin (1911–60), which distinguished between the utterance of words and sentences, the communicative acts performed thereby, and extralinguistic events or states of affairs occurring as a result. For Grice, the non- or extra-literal content of communicative acts, identified as “implicatures,” is determined through the observance, violation, or flouting of one or more conversational “maxims,” consisting of general principles of rational cooperation as adapted to conversational contexts.
- Also known as: H.P. Grice, H. Paul Grice, Herbert Paul Grice
- Born: March 13, 1913, Birmingham, England
- Died: August 28, 1988, Berkeley, California, U.S. (age 75)
- Known for: Contributions to pragmatics
Austin’s speech act theory thus explains how uttering “It’s hot in here” may constitute a request or a demand that someone open a window, while Grice’s implicature theory explains how “A Spanish author” uttered in response to “Who won this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature?” may imply that one doesn’t know the winner’s name.
Education and academic career
Grice attended the British public school Clifton College in Bristol, England, and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he graduated with first-class honors in classics (the study of ancient Greece and Rome) and philosophy in 1933 and 1935. He taught at a public school for one year and then returned to Oxford, becoming a lecturer and fellow in 1938–39 and thereafter serving in the British Royal Navy during World War II. Grice remained at Oxford until 1967, when he became a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. He taught there until his death in 1988, even after officially retiring in 1979.
Grice’s implicature theory
The conversational maxims proposed by Grice may be understood as common practices by means of which speakers and hearers rationally cooperate and thereby efficiently communicate with each other. In “Logic and Conversation”—first published in Syntax and Semantics, Volume 3: Speech Acts (1975)—Grice proposed a general cooperative principle and a set of four categories under which various maxims would be grouped.
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.”
Categories and maxims
- Quantity
- Maxim: “Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange).”
- Maxim: “Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.”
- Quality
- Supermaxim: “Try to make your contribution one that is true.”
- Submaxim: “Do not say what you believe to be false.”
- Submaxim: “Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.”
- Relation
- Maxim: “Be relevant.”
- Manner
- Supermaxim: “Be perspicuous.”
- Submaxim: “Avoid obscurity of expression.”
- Submaxim: “Avoid ambiguity.”
- Submaxim: “Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).”
- Submaxim: “Be orderly.”
Regarding the maxim “Be relevant,” Grice acknowledged that its terse formulation
conceals a number of problems that exercise me a good deal: questions about what different kinds and focuses of relevance there may be, how these shift in the course of a talk exchange, how to allow for the fact that subjects of conversation are legitimately changed, and so on.
The complex notion underlying these “exceedingly difficult” questions later became the basis of a major school of post-Gricean pragmatics, known as relevance theory.
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Groups of implicatures
Grice identified three broad groups of implicatures generated through the observance, violation, or flouting of maxims in keeping with the cooperative principle. The first group consists of cases in which “no maxim is violated, or at least in which it is not clear that any maxim is violated”; the second consists of cases in which “a maxim is violated, but its violation is to be explained by the supposition of a clash with another maxim”; and the third consists of cases in which “a maxim is flouted for the purpose of [communicating] a conversational implicature by means of…a figure of speech.”
In lectures and publications, Grice offered several examples of the types of implicatures yielded within his three groups. Among them are the following.
Group 1: Observing maxims Person A and person B are talking about person C, a mutual acquaintance, who is not with them at the time. A observes that C “doesn’t seem to have a girlfriend these days,” and B replies, “C has been paying a lot of visits to New York lately.”
Implicature: B would be violating the maxim of relation (“Be relevant”) unless B knew or at least believed that C has a girlfriend in New York. B’s utterance thus implicates the same.
Group 2: Violating maxims Person A and person B are planning a trip to France, and both know that B wishes to visit person C, a resident of France, during their trip. A asks B, “Where does C live?” and B replies, “Somewhere in the south of France.”
Implicature: B is violating the first maxim of quantity, “Make your contribution as informative as is required.” Assuming that B is observing the cooperative principle, this violation can be explained only on the assumption that, by being more informative, B would have violated the second maxim of quality, “Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.” B thereby implicates that B does not know exactly where in the south of France C lives.
Group 3: Flouting maxims Person A speaks to person B in unnecessarily obscure language in the presence of person C, a child. The language is understandable to B but apparently too obscure to be easily understood by C.
Implicature: A is violating the submaxim “Avoid obscurity of expression.” On the shared assumption that C is unlikely to understand the obscure language, A thereby implicates to B that the content of the communication should not be conveyed to C.
Other common uses of flouting are exemplified in utterances that violate the second maxim of quantity, “Do not make your contribution more informative than is required”; the first submaxim of quality, “Do not say what you believe to be false”; the maxim of relation, “Be relevant”; or the third submaxim of manner, “Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).” Illustrations of such flouting are listed in corresponding order below:
- If person A states not only that caffeine causes vertigo but also that it is certain that caffeine causes vertigo, that persons X, Y, and Z also believe that caffeine causes vertigo, and that the evidence showing that caffeine causes vertigo is this and that, person B may take A’s utterance to implicate that A is not quite certain that caffeine causes vertigo or that the claim that caffeine causes vertigo is somewhat controversial.
- If person A states what A clearly believes to be false, person B may take A to implicate the direct opposite of what A says, as would happen if A referred to person C, a longtime business colleague who told their supervisor that A had made a crucial mistake, as a “fine friend.”
- If person A unexpectedly states something offensive or otherwise inappropriate at a tea party—such as “Mrs. X is an old bag”—person B might respond with a remark such as “The weather has been quite delightful this summer, hasn’t it?” B thereby implicates that A’s statement should not be discussed or that A has committed a serious social blunder.
- And finally, if person A utters a needlessly wordy or detailed expression that is technically synonymous with a single term, person B may take A to implicate that the term does not apply to the person or event under discussion. Thus, if A does not utter “Miss X sang ‘Home Sweet Home’ ” but instead states that “Miss X produced a series of sounds that correspond closely with the score of ‘Home Sweet Home,’ ” A would be taken to implicate that Miss X’s singing was terrible.
“Conventional” implicatures
In addition to conversational implicatures, Grice recognized a distinct category of what he called “conventional” implicatures, or implicatures that he deemed to be conventionally associated with the literal meanings of certain words or expressions. Thus, according to Grice, an utterance such as “He is an Englishman; he is, therefore, brave” conventionally implicates, but does not literally mean, that English nationality entails (in some sense) bravery, or simply that all citizens or residents of England are brave. The notion of conventional implicature has proved to be controversial among many pragmatic theorists, because such implicatures seem to them to be directly expressed, rather than implied, by utterances containing the associated words or expressions.
Additional reading
During his lifetime Grice became well known for his papers and lectures, many of which were collected in books published after his death in 1988. Studies in the Way of Words (1989) contains important works published during his lifetime; The Conception of Value (1991) includes lectures delivered to members of the American Philosophical Association (APA) in 1983; and Aspects of Reason (2001) features Grice’s John Locke Lectures delivered at the University of Oxford in 1979.