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A socio-cognitive reinterpretation of Grice’s theory of conversation

  • Yanwei Hu

    Yanwei Hu has a PhD in Linguistics & Applied Linguistics from Peking University, China and is currently an associate professor in the English department of China University of Petroleum-Beijing. Her research interests include pragmatics and stylistics. Her most recent publication was “Relational work in dispute: Negotiating norms, negotiating relationships” in Journal of Politeness Research.

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Published/Copyright: February 23, 2024
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Abstract

Pragmatics research has been following two separate lines: the cognitive-philosophical line and the sociocultural-interactional line. Joining recent efforts of integration in pragmatics research, this paper reinterprets from a socio-cognitive perspective Grice’s theory of conversation (the Cooperative Principle with attendant maxims). The paper aims to incorporate social considerations into the theory, in the hope of enhancing its explanatory potential for information exchange in real-life discourse contexts. Focusing on cooperation as process, this paper examines Grice’s theory of conversation in connection with his theory of meaning and looks into the social-normative basis of the conversational behavior predicted by Grice. The conversational maxims can be characterized as socio-cognitive in the sense of being both cognitive and normative. They are normative expectations whose breach commits the speaker to interpretive and social consequences. The maxims used to be thought of in terms of a simple dichotomy: they are either observed or not observed, and non-observance has often been equated with non-cooperation. The paper draws attention to the fact that non-observance comes in different types (violating, opting out, flouting, and so on). It matters communicatively and extra-communicatively which type the non-observance falls into, as different types of non-observance have different interpretive and social consequences.


Corresponding author: Yanwei Hu, School of Foreign Languages, China University of Petroleum-Beijing, Beijing, China, E-mail:

About the author

Yanwei Hu

Yanwei Hu has a PhD in Linguistics & Applied Linguistics from Peking University, China and is currently an associate professor in the English department of China University of Petroleum-Beijing. Her research interests include pragmatics and stylistics. Her most recent publication was “Relational work in dispute: Negotiating norms, negotiating relationships” in Journal of Politeness Research.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. My gratitude also goes to Wangqi Jiang and Xuhui Hu for the inspiration and help they provided, and Dan Shen for her support, in my earlier explorations that led to this paper.

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Published Online: 2024-02-23
Published in Print: 2024-03-25

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