Talk:Cooperative principle

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Old talk
People often flout or violate maxims in order to create other meanings. This is called implicature.


 * I think this is a too narrow definition of "implicature" but I am too new to the subject to be sure yet. Anyway, this needs to be covered more thoroughly in the article on implicature (to which Implication (pragmatics) probably needs to be moved).


 * Also, I reckon we could merge this article into Gricean maxims. --Jim Henry | Talk 15:18, 19 August 2005 (UTC)


 * VIOLATING a maxim is crucially different from FLOUTING it. If I tell an outright lie, that's a violation of quality. If I make, e.g., an ironic statement (like "Beautiful weahther today!" when it's obviously raining cats and dogs) I'm blatantly FLOUTING the maxim of quality to create an implicature, and thereby exploiting the cooperative pronciple. Yamx 00:36, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree that this article and Gricean Maxims could/should be merged. However, we have to be careful with the "Implicature" article - different linguistc theories explain implicatures very differently - for example, Relevance Theory explains them differently than Grice does. So we have to be careful to keep those apart. Maybe it'd be best to just give a general explanation of implicatures there, and then link to the specific articles for different theories to show different approaches? Yamx 00:36, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Hyperprotected cooperative principle or cooperative principle?
Is it 'hyperprotected cooperative principle' or 'cooperative principle'?

The first time I came across this term was called the former. But I see the latter term quite often. Should there be a note about this?

Signature103 19:16, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I prefer the 'anthropologically linguistical hyperprotected cooperative principle of the gricean maxims.'208.118.163.99 (talk) 18:53, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Disambiguation
I believe this article could use a disambiguation for the 7 cooperative principles, also known as the Rochdale Principles. Gobonobo 09:00, 14 February 2007 (UTC) Thanks. Gobonobo 03:12, 15 February 2007 (UTC)


 * No problem. :-) —RuakhTALK 17:53, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Maxim of Relevance or Relation
In the main article for Paul Grice, it is called "Maxim of Relation", but here it is called "Maxim of Relevance". What is correct? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.227.112.139 (talk) 14:38, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

I believe both are used to refer to this particular maxim, but you are correct that "Maxim of Relation" is the original name. It might be best to present it as "Maxim of Relation" and then add a note that it is often referred to as the "Maxim of Relevance". Natnicmo (talk) 17:41, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Some Suggestions for Improvement
While I think this article is off to a good start (e.g. it has maintained a NPOV), if you follow the link to Paul Grice’s Wikipedia article, the sub-section featuring the Cooperation Principle seems to be more well-written than it is this article, which should not be the case. Content-wise, I think it would help to address a couple of things in order to be more comprehensive, for example mentioning when and how Grice came up with this principle (I have little knowledge on this subject and this comes from questions I have after reading the article). Also, we see children making violations to this all the time. Perhaps under “Obeying the Cooperative Principle” section it would be helpful to mention if Grice ever mentioned anything about when we acquire the Cooperative Principle. In terms of Wikipedia’s style guidelines, I think this article would adhere better to the style guidelines if “Flouting the Maxims” was to be directly following “Explanation” since the latter mentions flouting. Hannahjtalbot (talk) 22:22, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

I agree that this article does a good job of maintaining a NPOV and contains some good information, but there is also room for improvement! I think it is important to keep the formatting and organization consistent (particularly subheadings), and agree that the end of the section "Explanation" would lead nicely into "Flouting the Maxims", since the end of the former introduces the idea of implicature and flouting. It also might be interesting to include sections on the different ways of interacting with the maxims: observing a maxim, violating a maxim, and opting out of a maxim (in addition to flouting). As someone previously mentioned, I think it is important to make the distinction between violating and flouting a maxim. We also might consider providing specific conversational examples (with explanations) to talk about each of these. Natnicmo (talk) 17:39, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

I wasn't able to post this under the original comment about violating vs. flouting a maxim, but would it be a good idea to discuss different ways of interacting with the maxims: observing a maxim, violating a maxim, and opting out of a maxim, in addition to flouting (as I mentioned above)? Natnicmo (talk) 17:44, 3 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I have to agree with your commentary on ways of flouting maxims, and we can go further into types of observation making the distinction between overt and covert flouting as in lying versus dry sarcasm. It also should not be very difficult to flush out some of the citations in the article, rewriting them with new sources if we must CorporalKobold (talk) 22:40, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Parody?
There's a paragraph at the end of "Maxim of manner (clarity)": "It is clear that there is at least some attempt on the part of Grice for this maxim to be understood as a parody of itself." No citation is offered, no nearby citation supports the statement. Looking at the context the expressed opinion is clearly not self-evident and my own reaction is that the paragraph is obviously untrue. I'm not consulting, I'm deleting the paragraph. I merely note my removal here in case I'm clearly mistaken and someone wants to reinstate the text, in which case please offer justification below. JohnHarris (talk) 10:05, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Autism
I think it would be interesting to add a section about the relationship between the Gricean maxims and autism. If you look up "Autism and pragmatics" on Google Scholar, the first article has a section on Grice and how his maxims don't work for people on the autism spectrum. 2607:FEA8:BB1F:4870:9528:1CBB:CEB6:96C8 (talk) 01:40, 14 April 2024 (UTC)