Grice's Maxims
A theory of pragmatics that explains how humans are able to leverage shared background knowledge and assumptions about communication to understand utterances.
1 Example
Say there are two individuals in front of me: one with glasses and a hat, and one with glasses only. If I tell you, "my friend is the one with glasses", you can assume that my friend is the one with glasses only. You assume this because you believe I am trying to pick out one individual. If my friend was the one with the hat, I would not have used this description.
2 Maxims
- Maxim of quality: say what is true. Do not say what you don't know to be true
- Maxim of quantity: say all that is required to be informative in context and do not say more than necessary.
- Example: If I say "Some of the class did their homework", the implicature is that not all the class did the homework, because if everyone did their homework, it would have been more informative to report that instead. See Scalar Implicature
- Maxim of relation: say what is relevant
- Maxim of manner: be un-ambiguous and un-obscure