‘Successful linguistic communication depends on participants’ capacity for rational, purposeful... - page 2
Keywords: Sociolinguistics; talk; language; politeness theory; face; communication
By sth202 on 25/09/2008
Level: Bachelor Honours Degree (BA, BEng, BSc etc)
Page Number: 2 of 7 pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
if they wish to make sense and that listeners can only reasonably assume a small number of interpretations. It is therefore without question that “we can view utterances as acts of various kinds and exchanges of utterances that we call conversations as exchanges of acts, not just exchanges of words” (Wardhaugh 1998: 286). It would be pointless to attempt to have a conversation if the words and phrases we were using made no grammatical sense, as it would not then consequentially convey any real meaning either and the discussion would probably have to come to an end. Owing to mutual understanding being the aim of such linguistic interaction, Grice proposes the 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” (Grice 1975, quoted in Cameron 2001: 75, Foley 1997: 276, Wardhaugh 1998: 287). This means that anyone involved in a “particular linguistic interaction” will disclose only things which are applicable at all times during the discourse (Foley 1997: 276). It is believed that this is the underlying necessity without which human linguistic interactions in conversation would not be possible. To further emphasise the point that conversation is governed by rules and would not work otherwise, Grice (as explained in (among others) Foley 1997: 276-7) suggests four conversational maxims;
• the Maxim of Quantity – when speaking, one should not give too much or too little information;
• the Maxim of Quality – one should not lie or say things for which one does not possess sufficient evidence;
• the Maxim of Relevance – one must not say things that are irrelevant;
• the Maxim of Manner – one must not be ambiguous or obscure, long winded or incoherent
Be that as it may, although conversation does make use of the cooperative principle, these maxims are not always followed entirely, in the interests of politeness and face.
Sometimes users of language do not follow the most obvious choice of words because of their consideration for face (Kasper 2005, in Kiesling and Paulston 2005: 60). This is not face in the everyday sense of the word which anyone would understand, although it can stem from the same meaning. For example, in the English language we have the term ‘to lose face’, which usually means to embarrass oneself or similar. In linguistic terms it has much the
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