Unit Eight: Violating Grice's Maxims

THE MAXIM OF RELEVANCE: I remember once when my family and I were in Turkey, where discussing another person’s weight is considered fair game for conversation. My Turkish host mother began discussing the weight gain of my American friend, in English. She looked at me to continue the conversation, but instead of maintaining the given topic, I quickly changed gears and began to discuss plans for the day. I did this because I didn’t want my friend to feel singled out or even mocked, which may have been the interpretation considering the pragmatic rules surrounding that particular topic (weight) in the US. I did not try to signal this, since I wanted it to appear natural (again, not to put my friend ‘on the spot.’)

THE MAXIM OF QUALITY: Recently, it was raining in Bogotá, as it has been doing a lot this month. I was with my Colombian friend who always joins me in mutual ‘competitive teasing’ about the superiority of our native countries (to include ‘best climate.’) When I greeted her in the rain, I pointed out the wonderful, typical sunny day that we were enjoying in Bogotá. This was clearly not true, and I lied in order to achieve a sarcastic highlighting of the abysmal weather—hence signaling the inferiority of ‘her’ city’s climate. I signaled the sarcasm by becoming overly excited at the observation—even more excited than I would get if it truly had been sunny—with voice inflexion and exaggerated facial expressions.

THE MAXIM OF QUANTITY: I continually violate the maxim of quantity, as well as most of my friends, in the following scenario: someone calls me and asks me what I’m doing, and I reply, ‘nothing.’ Now, assuming the questioner was not violating the quality maxim and honestly wanted to know what I was doing, my reply was much too short and uninformative. But I, like my friends, just feel this is an easier cue to signal: ‘it’s ok, I have time to talk.’ I mean, obviously I’m doing something, but I assume that the other person does not want to hear minute details such as “I’m doing school work” or “I’m making coffee,” which may actually lead them to assume I don’t want to talk to them. In other words, I give an uninformative answer since—in both US and Colombian cultures—it is an acceptable and succinct way to give the caller license to interrupt my day and have a conversation with me.

THE MAXIM OF MANNER: Before my little cousins could read, we would spell out words that we didn’t want them to understand (as my older cousins had no doubt done with me before). One Easter, my uncle reported that my cousins had “R-A-B-B-I-T-S” waiting for them in their Easter basket. While this gave me the exact information I had asked for, it did so in a way that was obscure to my younger cousins. The reason, of course, was so that they would not decipher the surprise that awaited them. The only signal given was a look in their direction, just in case I may not understand why he’d switched to spelling a word out.