合作原则与礼貌原则

The Application of the Cooperative Principle and the Politeness Principle in Conversation

Ma Lixia Class 4, Grade 2007 English Department Abstract: To accomplish the communication efficiently and successfully, people usually follow some certain principles in conversation. In making conversation, the participants must first of all be willing to cooperate; otherwise, it would not be possible for them to carry on the talk. Grice named this principle as the Cooperative Principle. However, the Cooperative Principle alone cannot fully explain how people talk: it explains how conversational implicature is given rise, but it does not tell us why people do not say directly what they mean. The Politeness Principle that Leech has developed can explain some phenomenon from a different perspective that the Cooperative Principle cannot. The Cooperative Principle and the Politeness Principle are important contents of pragmatic. In this paper the writer makes a systematic exposition of what are the Cooperative Principle and the Politeness Principle and how they are applied and interact with each other in people?s conversations.

Key words: cooperative principle, politeness principle, maxim, violation, conversational implicature

合作原则和礼貌原则在会话中的应用

外语系英语专业 2007级 4 班马利霞

摘要:为了更有效更成功地完成交流活动，在会话中，人们通常会遵循一些特定的准则。进行对话，参与者必须首先有意愿去合作，否则，会话将难以进行下去。Grice将这个准则叫做合作原则(Cooperative Principle)。然而，仅合作原则却并不能完全解释人们是如何进行会话的。它解释了会话含义是如何产生的，却并没有告诉我们为什么人们总是不直接说出他们想要表达的意思。Leech 提出的礼貌原则能够从另一个不同的角度解释合作原则所不能解释的现象。合作原则和礼貌原则是应用学中的重要内容。在这篇文章中，作者对什么事合作原则和礼貌原则，它们如何被应用在人们的会话当中，以及它们之间是如何地相互作用等做全面的阐述。

关键词:合作原则；礼貌原则；准则；违反；会话含义

1. Introduction

Pragmatics is a relatively new subject in linguistics. It deals with how utterances have meanings in situations. Studying pragmatics is very important. It enables us to understand what the nature of language itself is and how language is used in communication. In order to creat an effective conversation, people do follow some principles during their conversation. And the Cooperative Principle (CP) and Politeness Principle (PP) are among those most familiar ones. The CP means that we should say what is true in a clear and relevant manner. The following are brief inquires into the Cooperative Principle and Politeness Principle, and the relation between these two principles.

2. The Cooperative Principle (CP)

We know that quite often a speaker can mean a lot more than what is said. The problem is to explain how the speaker can manage to convey more than what is said and how the hearer can arrive at the speaker?s meaning. H.P. Grice believes that there must be some mechanisms governing the productionand comprehension of these utterances. He suggests that there is a set of assumptions guiding the conduct of conversation. This is what he calls the Cooperative Principle (CP).

2. 1 Maxims of the CP

The Cooperative Principle is a set of suppositional maxims that speakers should observe if the speakers hope to understand each other better and avoid various interpretations in their conversation.According to the American Linguistic Philosopher Grice's concept of the CP, it can be divided into four categories of maxims(Leech,1989:21).They are expressed as follows.

①The Maxim of Quantity

● Make your contribution as informative as is required(for the current purpose of the exchange).

● Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.

②The maxim of quality

Try to make your contribution one that is true

● Do not say what you believe to be false.

● Do not say that for which you lack adquate evidence.

③The Maixm of Realition

● Be relevant

④The Maixm of Manner

Be perspicuous

● Avoid obscurity of expression.

● Aviod ambiguity.

● Be brief (aviod prolixility).

● Be orderly.

From above we can see these four maxims specify what speakers have to do in their utterance communication, that is they should speak sincerely, relevantly and clearly, and provide sufficient information in their talking.But actually on observing the maxims of CP, different people in different situations have different emphases. For example (Liu Runqing, 1999:87), an English teacher says to a Chinese student: “Oh,

what beautiful handwriting!” The student is so embarrassed to hear the praise that she hurries to say: “No, no, not at all.Y ou are joking”. On hearing this, the teacher has nothing to say and leaves with a shrug of the shoulders. This example shows the differences in observing the CP between the teacher and student. The English teacher considers the Maxim of Quantity, but in reply the student lays stress on the Modesty Maxim of Politeness Principle and ignores the Maxim of Quanlity. As a result, their mutual observing of the CP is disturded. And the teacher?s true remarks are not accepted by the student, so he leaves unhappily. In short, these maxims specify what participants have to do in order to converse in a maximally efficient, rational, and cooperative way: they should speak sincerely, relevantly and clearly, while at the same time providing sufficient information. It is believed that if participants are following these maxims, they are cooperating with one another in creating an effective conversation.

The fact that the Cooperative Principle and its component maxims are expressed in the imperative has misled many readers to regard them as prescriptive: telling speakers how they ought to behave; while the truth is that the CP is meant to describe what actually happens in conversation. That is, when we speak we generally have something like the CP and its maxims in our mind to guide us, though subconsciously, or even unconsciously. We will try to say things which are true, relevant, as well as informative enough, and in a clear manner. Hearers will also try to interpret what is said to them in this way.

2. 2 Violation of the maxims

The use of terms such as “principle” and “maxim” does not mean that the CP and its maxims will be followed by everybody all the time. People do violate them and tell lies. And actually, people often tend to violate one or some of the maxims of the CP in order to obey other maxims, or to suggest some special implicatures.

2. 2. 1 Violation of the Maxim of Quantity

⑴Make your contribution as informative as is required:

Ex. 1-1

A: 昨天上街买了些什么?

B: 就买了些东西。

> > I don?t want to tell you what I bought.

Ex. 1-2

A: Y our kid broke the window.

B: Boys are boys.

> >Boys are naughty and mischievous by nature.

⑵Do not make your contribution more informative than is required:

Ex. 1-3

Aunt: How did Jimmy do his history exam?

Mother: Oh, not at all well. Teachers asked him things that happened before the poor boy was born.

> > Her son should not be blamed.

Ex. 1-4

A: Where is X?

B: He?s gone to the library. He said so when he left.

> > B may implicate that he is not sure whether X has really gone to the library.

2. 2. 2 Violation of the Maxim of Quanlity

⑴Do not say what you believe to be false.

Ex. 2-1

He is a tiger.

>> He has some characteristics of a tiger.

⑵Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

Ex. 2-2

A: Beirut is in Peru, isn?t it?

B: And Rome is in Romania, I suppose.

> > It’s ridiculous.

2. 2. 3 Violation of the Maxim of Relation

Be relevant.

Ex. 3-1

A: Prof. Wang is an old bag.

B: Nice weather for the time of year.

> > I don’t want to talk about Prof. Wang.

2. 2. 4 Violation of the Maxim of Manner

⑴Avoid obscurity of expression

Ex. 4-1

A: Let’s get the kids something.

B: Ok, but I veto I-C-E-C-R-E-A-M-S.

>> Don’t give them icecreams.

⑵Avoid ambiguity

Ex. 4-2

A: Name and title, please?

B: John Smith, Associate Editor and professor.

⑶Be brief

Ex. 4-3

A: Did you get my assignment?

B: I received two pages clipped together and covered with rows of black squiggles.

> > B?s not satisfied.

Ex. 4-4

Miss X produced a series of sounds that corresponded closely with the score

of “Home sweet home”.

> > Miss X?s performance is so poor that the word “sing” cannot be applied.

Though sometimes the maxims are breached, the hearer still assumes that the speaker is being cooperative and then infers that the speaker must have meant or implicated something else which is distinct from the literaltive meaning. That is, the speaker must have had some special reasons for not observing the maxims.

2. 3 Conclution to the CP

The cooperative principle goes both ways: speakers (generally) observe the

cooperative principle, and listeners (generally) assume that speakers are observing it. This allows for the possibility of implicatures, which are meanings that are not explicitly conveyed in what is said, but that can nonetheless be inferred. For example, if Alice points out that Bill is not present, and Carol replies that Bill has a cold, then there is an implicature that the cold is the reason, or at least a possible reason, for Bill's absence; this is because Carol's comment is not cooperative —does not contribute to the conversation — unless her point is that Bill's cold is or might be the reason for his absence. (This is covered specifically by the Maxim of Relation; see Gricean maxims).

However, it is clear that Grice?s work has major limitations. It is based on introspection rather than data, and takes no account of interpersonal factors. However it is part of the foundations of the discipline of pragmatics, and as such it is part of what we all build on. Therefore care should be taken in its interpretation. The Cooperative Principle accounts for the relationship between the literal meaning and actual meaning, explaining how the “Conversational Implicature”is produced and understood, but it does not explain why people violate the conversational maxims so as to express themselves in a vague or an indirect way. And Leech?s Politeness Principle is proposed as the complementary to Grice?s Cooperative Principle.

2. 4 Conversational Implicatures

American linguistics H.P.Grice once gave speeches in 1967. In the speech, Grice said, the two sides of the conversation must obey some basic rules, especially the “cooperative principle”, to ensure that the conversation can go on propitiously. He believed that the two sides of the conversation should have a same wish: the two sides can understand each other. So both of them obey some cooperative principles to achieve the aim. However, Grice also said, not all the people in the conversation obey the rules. Once one side finds the other side not obey the cooperative principle, he will make himself try his best to understand the unsaid meaning in the conversation. So the conversational implicature comes out. Grice?s basic idea is that in communication, speakers aim to follow the CP and its maxims, and that hearers interpret utterances with these maxms in mind. According to Grice, utterance interpretation is not a matter of decoding message, but rather involves(a)taking the meaning of the sentences together with contextual information, (b)using inference rules, and (c)working out what the speaker means on the basis of the assumption that the utterance conforms to the maxims. In short, CP is meant to describe what actually happens in conversation. People tend to be cooperative and obey CP in communication. However, CP is often violated. Since CP is regulative, CP can be violated. Violation of CP and its maxims leads to conversational implicature.

Conversational implicature is a kind of extra meaning, which is not literally contained in the utterance and beyond the sentence itself. Generally speaking, people do not usually say things directly but tend to imply them and people tend to violate the maxim of quality, quantity, relation and manner to produce conversational implicature, which send the unsaid meaning of the words. Conversational Implicature as a type of implied meaning, which is deduced on the basis of the conversational meaning of words together with the context, under the guidance of the CP and its

maxims. In this sense, implicature is comparable to illocutionary force in speech act theory in that they are both concerned with the contextual side of meaning, or 言外之意in Chinese. And these two theories differ only in the mechanisms they offer for explaining the generation of contextual meaning.

2.4.1 T he sorts of the conversational implicature:

Generally speaking, conversational implicature can be divided into two kinds: generalized implicature and particularized implicature.

Particularized implicature refers to the implicature that violates some of the cooperative principle and makes the meaning in some specially context. In the conversation, one side violates the cooperative principle obliviously. And the other side is forced to concluding the meaning of the words means on the particular time, place and person..

Ex. 4-1

A: Where does C live?

B: Somewhere in the South of France.

> > B does not, for some reason or other, want to reveal X?s precise location. (in some contexts)

Generalized implicature refers to an implicature, which obeys the cooperative principle and also has the unsaid meaning.

Ex. 4-2

A: would you like to join us for the picnic on Sunday?

B: I?m afraid I?ve got a class on Sunday.

> > B does not want to join A for the picnic on Sunday.

2. 4. 2 The Characteristics of the conversational implicature:

⑴Calculability----可推导性

The fact that speakers try to convey conversational implicatures and hearers are able to understand them suggests that implicatures are calculable.

They can be worked out on the basis of some previous information. Grice lists the nessary data as follows：

＊The conventional meaning of the words used,together that may be involved.

＊The CP and its maxims

＊The context,linguistic or otherwise,of the utterance.

＊Other items of background knowledge

＊The fact or supposed fact that all participants and both participants know or assume this to be the case.

⑵Cancellability----可取消性

Cancellability Cancellability is also known as defeasibility(可废除性). The conversational implicatures rely on some factors, such as the conventional meaning of wors used, the CP, the linguistic and situational contexts,etc. So if any of them changes, the implicature will also change. If the linguistic or situational contexts changes, the implicature will also change. And if we put some limits or precondition on the inhere words, some meanings can be canceled.This is the most important feature of conversational implicature.

Ex. 4-3

A: Do you want some coffee?

B: Coffee would keep me awake.

> > I do not like coffee . / Coffee would keep me awake. I want to stay up.

In the following example, (a) usually implicates (b). But if the speaker adds “if not more” to (a), to change it to (c), then the previous implicature (b) is cancelled, or defeated. And (c) means (d).

a. John has three cows.

b. John has only three cows.

c. John has three cows, if not more.

d. John has at least three cows.

⑶Non-detachability----不可分离性

Non-detachability means that a conversational implicature is attached to the semantic content of what is said, not to the linguistic form.Implicatures do not vanish if the words of an utterance are changed for synonyms.

Ex. 4-4

A: Shall we go the cinema tonight?

B: There?ll be an exam tomorrow./

I?ll take an exam tomorrow./

Isn’t there an exam tomorrow?

> > I do not want to go to see movies tonight.

In the ex. 4-4, though B may reply in different ways, he is implying the same implicature: I?m not willing to go to see movies with you tonight. This has shown the non-detachability of conversational implicature.

⑷Non-conventionality-----非规约性

Implicature is indeterminate, which varies with the context.Conversational implicature as a type of implied meaning, which is deduced on the basis of the conventional meaning of words together with the context, under the guida nce of the CP and its maxims. It not only exists in the literal meaning of the words but also lays in that the sentence speaker say. That is , implicature is is context-dependent.

Ex. 4-5

A: The hostess is an awful bore,don’t you think so?

B: The roses are lovely, aren?t they？

> > It?s not polite to talk about the hostess this way.

3.The Politeness Principle

3. 1 Introduction of the PP

While the Gricean theory of conversational implicature is regarded as a breakthrough in pragmatic study of language use, the cooperative principle (CP) is found inadequate in explaining the relation between sense and force. Leech (1983: 80) points out that CP in itself cannot explain why people are often so indirect in conveying what they mean. The Cooperative Principle alone cannot fully explain how people talk. It explains how conversational implicature is given rise to but it does not tell us why people do not say what they mean. Why, for instance, do people say “Could you give me a lift?”instead of “Give me a lift”? The reason has to do with

another principle which applies to conversation in addition to the Cooperative Principl e—the Politeness Principle (PP) .

Grice's theory of CP is, fundamentally speaking, logic-oriented. Conversational interaction is also social behavior. Besides being cooperative, participants of conversations normally try to be polite. The speakers consider the matter of face for themselves and others. Politeness is universal to all cultures, according to Brown and Levinson, largely because all people have the need to be appreciated and protected. So in conversation we should follow PP. According to Leech, PP tells us to minimize the effects of impolite statements or expressions and tomaximize the politeness of polite illocutions; all the time, of course, respecting the intentions that direct the ongoing conversations. Based on this observation, Leech (1983: 13, 2) proposes the politeness principle (PP). He divides the PP into six maxims, each of which consists of two sub-maxims (Leech,1983:79-83). They are as follows:

3.1.1 The six maxims of the PP:

①Maxim of Tact (in directive and commissives

⑴Minimize cost of other

⑵Maximize benefit to other

②Maxim of Generosity (in directives and commissives)

⑴Minimize benefit to self

⑵Maximize cost to self

③Maxim of Approbation (in expressives and assertives)

⑴Minimize dispraise of other

⑵Maximize praise of other

④Maxim of Modesty (in expressives and assertives)

⑴Minimize praise of self

⑵Maximize dispraise of self

⑤Maxim of Agreement (in assertives)

⑴Minimize disagreement between self and other

⑵Maximize agreement between self and other

⑥Maxim of Sympathy (in assertives)

⑴Minimize antipathy between self and other

⑵Maximize sympathy between self and other

(Leech, 1983:132) The above maxims are a cost-benefit analysis of PP and may be formulated in a general way from the two key aspects: to minimize (other things being equal) the expression of impolite beliefs and maximize (other things being equal) the expression of polite beliefs, Leech (1983:133) notes that in his politeness principle and maxims, there is a more general law that politeness is focused more strongly on other than on self and within each maxim. Briefly, this principle requires speakers to “minimize the expression of impolite beliefs”.These maxims can help to explain, among other things, why certain forms are more acceptable than others. In British culture, for example, the Politeness Principle probably accounts for the use of “white lies”in conversation. For instance, if someone invites another person to a party and that person wants to decline the invitation, rather than saying “No, I don?t want to come”

the person might pretend to have another engagement and say “Thank you, but I?m going out that evening”. Of course, after repeated invitations which are repeatedly declined with statements like “I?m afraid I?m busy” or “I have another engagement”, the inviter will probably “get the message”and stop inviting. White lies must of course be properly deceptive. Imagine someone who declined an invitation for dinner the following weekend by saying “I think I?m going to have a headache”. In its transparency this “white lie”is a failure—it breaks the Politeness Principle—and is perhaps even more impolite than a simple direct refusal.

3. 1. 2 The application of the PP

The Maxim of Approbation will explain why a compliment like “What a marvelous meal you cooked!”is highly valued while “What an awful meal you cooked!” is not socially accepted. T hus when criticism is inevitable, understatement is preferred as a show of reluctance to dispraise (Cf. “Her composition was not so good as it might have been.”). The Maxim of Modesty accounts for the benign nature of utterances like “How stupid of me!”and the offensive nature of “How clever of me!”Regulated by the maxim of agreement, people tend to exaggerate their common ground first, even when much difference is to follow:

⑴A: The book is very well written.

B: Yes, well written as a whole, but there are some rather boring patches, don?t you think?

In the following example, notice how much effort speaker B put into trying to hide the fact that speaker A thinks one thing (the female being discussed is “small”) and he thinks the opposite.

⑵ A: She?s small, isn?t she?

B: Well, she?s sort of small. . . certainly not very large. . . but actually. . . I would have to say that she is large rather than small.

This conversation is very different indeed from the following simple expression of disagreement:

⑶A: She?s small, isn?t she?

B: No, she?s large.

If expressing disagreement is inevitable, then speakers attempt to soften it in various ways, by expressing regret at the disagreement (“I?m sorry, but I can?t agree with you”). Notice in this example, the use of the word can’t. This seems to imply that the speaker would like to agree. Speakers may even show reluctance to speak at all when they know they will be disagreein g—they use expressions such as well at the beginning of their utterances or they “hum and haw”.

The Maxim of Sympathy has such a regulative force that we invariably interpret (4) as a congratulation and (5) as a condolence:

(4) I?m delighted to hear about your cat.

(Most likely the cat has just won a prize in the cat-show.)

(5) I?m terribly sorry to hear about your cat.

(Probably the cat has just died.)

3. 2 Politeness

While the syntactic form is the same, the illocution varies in these

utterances. A scale of politeness can also be illustrated by utterances that have the same proposition: The purpose of the speaker is the same, but the degree of politeness increases as indirectness of the speech act ascends. “Indirect illocutions tend to be more polite, (a) because they increase the degree of optionality, and (b) because the more indirect an illocution is, the more diminished and tentative its force tends t o be.” (Leech 1983: 108) This is often employed as a strategy in speech, a point to be made in the next part. The existence of degree of politeness allows for choice on the part of the speaker. As a linguistic interaction is necessarily a social interactio n, the choice is largely determined by such social factors as social distance and power. The more remote the social distance between the interlocutors, the more polite the linguistic expressions tend to be. This phenomenon is also a topic in sociolinguistics. Very often a superficial view is taken of politeness in spoken language—it is associated with being superficially “nice”, and with formal, mechanical extras such as the words please, and thank you and the use of special constructions such as would you mind. . . or could you. . . or I wonder if you could. . . But politeness is a pervasive principle and also involves the content of conversation.

To follow PP, we have some strategies, the positive- politeness strategy, the negative- politeness strategy and the indirect- politeness strategy. For instance, suppose that Rob and Julia are standing by the water cooler chattering about how employees are being treated when Rob says, “Y ou know, we?ve all been a bit peeved at having to kick in twenty- five dollars to brighten up our conference room.” If Julia violates the relevance maxim and says “The water just doesn?t seemas cold as it should be.”Rob will infer something about her response, such as “She must not want to talk about it, and what she is doing is tel lingme in a nice way that it?s none of my business.”Here, Julia takes the indirect- politeness strategy.

3.3 The face theory

When talking about the PP, we must mention the face theory or the face saving theory, which was proposed by Brown and Levinson. Acting cooperatively, people try to build up their interlocutors?positive face, while trying to avoid posing threatens to their negative faces. Brown and Levinson, they “treat the aspects of face as basic wants, which every member knows every other member desires, and which in general it is in the interests of every member to partially satisfy(ibid, 1987)”. That is, face is the public self-image that everyone wants and expects everyone else to recognize.(ibid, 61) They hold that “face can be, and routinely is, ignored”, “in case of social breakdown (affrontery)”, “in case of urgent cooperation, or in the interests of efficiency”(ibid,1983). Therefore, they define face as wants and classify the notion of face into two types: the negative face and the positive face. They state negative face as “the want of every …competent adult member?that his actions be unimpeded by others. It refers to the need to be independent, to have freedom from of action, and not to be imposed on by others. By contrast, the positive face refers to the need to be treated as a member of the same group, and to know that one?s wants are shared by others. So they define positive face as “the want of every member that his wants be desirable to at least some other (ibid, 1987:67)”.

Brown and Levinson argue that conversation is much more concerned with

observing politeness expectations designed to ensure the “redress of face with the exchange of information(ibid,1987:68) Thus, the notion of positive and negative politeness are derived. By negative politeness, it is meant that the participants tend to show deference, emphasize the importance of the participants?right to freedom or independence in their social interactions. Positive politeness is concerned with participants? positive face. They will tend to show solidarity, emphasize that both the speaker and the hearer want the same thing, and that appeal to a common goal and even friendship or membership. Therefore, Brown and Levinson state that “positive politeness is oriented toward the positive face of H, the positive self-image that he claims for himself.(ibid,1987:68)”. They state that negative politeness “is oriented mainly toward partially satisfying (redressing) H?s negative face, his basic want to maintain claims of territory and self-det ermination.(ibid)”. They propose that to realize the negative-politeness strategies, the speaker must be assured to recognize and respect “the addressee?s negative face wants and will not (or will only minimally) interfere with the addressee?s freedom of a ction (ibid, 1987:68)”. So according to Gu, Brown and Levinson advocate the position that “face and politeness hold a means-to-end relation between them” (1990: 241) .Yule also holds that politeness can be understood as the means employed to show awareness of another?s face. That is to say, the function of linguistic politeness is to protect the “face” from being damaged or to minimize the damaging degree of the face-threatening acts.

3. 4 The drawbacks of the PP

It is a pity that Leech?s Politeness Principle ignores context, because it takes much inconvenience to the specific use and explanation of the theory. The narrowest understanding of the context is the language environment. But this kind of understanding cannot explain some phenomena in the language use, because the language activities always carry on in the specific time, the specific space, the specific circumstances, and between the specific persons. So we must consider these elements outside the language to understand the context exactly.

In observing the PP, people should be always polite to other s—minimize cost to other and maximize benefit to other, so as to make a good impression on other and win mutual respect. But this is not for all the cases. Things are different while in the situation of busy work, in the heat of a debate or in the talk of two intimate friends. The PP gives way to the content of words.

4. The relation between the CP and the PP

Then what is the relation between the CP and PP? As we know, the CP helps to account for the relation between sense and force. However, the CP in itself cannot explain why people are often so indirect in conveying what they mean, and what is the relation between sense and force when non-declarative types of sentence are being considered. And, in most cases, the indirectness is motivated by considerations of politeness. Politeness is ususlly regarded by most pragmatists as a means of strategy which is used by a speaker to achieve various purposes, such as saving face, establishing and maintaining harmonious social relations in conversation. Leech (1983b: 80) looks on politeness as crucial in accounting for “why people are often so indirect in conveying what they mean”. He thus puts forward the Politeness Principle

so as to “rescue the Cooperative Principle”in the sense that politeness can satisfactorily explain exceptions to and apparent deviations from the CP. Therefore, his Politeness Principle is not just an addition to Grice?s CP, but a necessary complement needed for cases where the CP fails to ofter a reasonable explanation. The function of the Politeness Principle is that speakers should try to express themselves in a polite way, in an indirect way and let the hearers sense their implicature. The following are examples where the PP rescues the CP: Ex.4-1

A: 小李和小王人都不错，是吧?

B: 是的，小李人不错。

Ex.4-2

Wang: 有人动我的吉他了。

Li: 不是我。

In ex. 4-1, B apparently flouts the Maxim of Quantity. When A asks B to confirm A?s opinion, B only confirms part of it, and pointedly ignores the rest. From this we derive an implicature: B is of the opinion that Wang is not a good guy. But on what grounds is the implicature arrived at? Not solely on the basis of the CP, for B could have added “…… but not Wang” without being untruthful, irrelevant, or unclear. The conclusion is that would be at cost of being more impolite to a third party: that B therefore suppressed the desired information in order to uphold the Agreeement Maxim of PP.

In ex. 4-2, it is typically an exchange between Wang and Li. There is an apparent flout of the Maxim of Relation in Li?s reply. Wang substitutes an impersonal pronoun someone for the second-person pronoun “you”. Thus Wang?s remark is interpreted as an indirect accusation; When Li hears this assertion, Li responds it as having implication that: Li may well be guilty, so Li denies an offence which has not been overtly imputed and says, “It wasn?t me”. What this suggests then is that the apparent irrelevance of Li?s reply is due to an implicature of Wang?s utterance, Li responds to that implication, the indirectness of which is motivated by the Approbation Maxim of PP, rather than to what is actually said.

. In certain circumstances, PP takes the back seat to CP. For example, in some cooperative activities, such as some business negotiation, the transfer of information is the most important thing. The conversationalists only care the information, and howto transfer information most effectively. Now CP comes first. So it can be concluded that when CP is thought about more, PP has to be thought about less, and vice versa.

It is argued that when the CP and PP are in contradiction, it is generally the CP maxims that get sacrificed. When the truth cannot be told for politeness sake, a white lie may be offered. In fact the PP is so powerful that people are often encouraged to violate its maxim in order to ensure a cooperative discourse (“Don?t be too modest. Tell us everything you?ve achieved.”“If you find anything inadequate in the paper, don?t hesitate to point it out”). Irony is a means to solve the conflict between the CP and PP—when the truth is too offensive to be told, an ironic utterance assumes a polite surface while delivering an unpleasant true message underneath.

In summary, so long as we combine the CP with the PP properly, we can go on quite well with our communication and achieve the mutual understanding and realize the mutual cooperation desire.

5. Conclusion

There?s no doubt that Grice?s Cooperative Principle and Leech?s Politeness Principle are two major principles that guide the ways people communicate with each other. However, principles, unlike rules, are not black and white; you can obey them to some extent and violate them to some extent. For example, one principle says we should tell the truth and another says we should be polite in our speech. But sometimes these two principles are in contradiction. If I tell you the truth, I won?t be polite and if I want to be polite, I can?t tell you the truth. What we do under these circumstances is that we tend to strike a balance betweem the two—express some polite beliefs and then tell the truth in very soft, gentle words. Anyhow, the nature of these two principles is to help people to make successful communication. Bibliography

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