Tuesday 5 May 2020

conversational implicature

First encountering this lesson on the “hidden rules of conversation” until I took the time to view it, I was assuming that it referred to the unwritten order of precedence for adjectives which English speakers follow and whose violations are called out—a fascinating if not narrow phenomenon in its own right, but subject tackled—quite well, the cooperative principle, the attainment and sustainment of effective communication, speaks to something fundamental to the nature of language—reinforced again by disregarding the above norms of exchange. The basic guidelines that define this pursuit of a social goals and consensus-building—as opposed to rhetoric and sophistry are known as Grice’s Maxims—as set out by H.P. Grice (*1913 – †1988): try to make only the contributions to the conversation that are confidently true, relevant, succinct and orderly. It was really engaging to note how much of our speech and correspondence can be implied and what mechanisms act as a leveller for assumptions, intuitions with those shared shortcuts being a vital and integral component for efficient communication.