Meaning Between the Lines: Grice’s Cooperative Principle Lesson 2 Learning Outcomes: At the end of this lesson, you are expected to: •describe the process of Grice’s Cooperative Principle in interpreting dramatic texts; and •demonstratemastery on Grice’s Cooperative Principle in analyzing texts. Introduction: Welcome to Lesson 2! In this lesson, we willfocus on the “meaning between the lines” in relation to a theory first proposed by an American philosopher; Paul Grice called the Cooperative Principle in conversation. Thus, this lesson will help us onhow we can infer Grice’s account of conversational cooperation and its associated maxims that would help us to understand the ‘subtext’ of a play and relations between characters. Activity Read and examine the three sets of conversation presented below. Observe how the second character(Phil, Vin, and Boknoy)responded to the first(Benjie, Alex, and Aura). (1)Benjie:Do you want to go for shopping tonight? Phil:We have bills due. (2)Alex:What does discourse analysis mean? Vin:Do you have an hour or two? (3)Aura:Do you think James is handsome? Boknoy:He has lovely personality.
We will use Paul Grice's (1975) influential 'Cooperative Principle' approach to describe how we infer unstated meanings in ordinary conversations and apply this to dramatic conversations. Grice says that when we communicate we assume, without realizing it, that we, and the people we are talking to, will be conversationally cooperative - we will cooperate to achieve mutual conversational ends. Thisconversational cooperationeven works when we are not being cooperative socially. So, for example, we can be arguing with one another angrily and yet we will still cooperate quite a lot conversationally to achieve the argument. This conversational cooperation manifests itself, according to Grice, in a number of conversational MAXIMS, as he calls them, which we feel the need to abide by. These maxims look at first sight like rules, but they appear to be broken more often than grammatical or phonological rules are, for example, as we will see later, and this is why Grice uses the term 'maxim' rather than 'rule'. Here are the four maxims (there may well be more) which Grice says we all try to adhere to in conversation. The conversational maxims Maxim of Quantity (quantity of information)Analysis
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