Grices Cooperative Principles, Generosity and Tact Maxims - Assignment Example

? Politeness Politeness de s how individuals demonstrate regard for one another’s public self image. It is an important element in the social order and human cooperation. Any theory that attempts to explain politeness must be grounded in the fundamentals of human social life. Attempts at understanding politeness embody universal principles that guide human interaction. The universality cuts across different groups and societies irrespective of their distance from one another, or the complexity of their economic and social life. Politeness varies between cultures, groups and situations, especially in its definition. An expression of politeness in one group may be construed as impolite in another. These disparities result from differences in socio-cultural elements of different communities. While polite behavior makes people be at ease, impolite behavior causes discomfort in people. Politeness elicits comfort in people as it demonstrates that the actor shows regard for his or her audience. Politeness pervades every form of interpersonal behavior including linguistic and non-linguistic forms of behavior. Different groups have specifications for politeness unique to their culture. Individuals engage in interaction, in different situations cognizant of these norms and principles (Andersen 2001, p. 21). This explains why the expression of politeness in the workplace is different from the expression of politeness while at the dining table. This paper discusses how well Geoffrey Leech’s generosity and tact maxims can explain politeness. It will explain how different sociolinguistic factors affect people’s perception of politeness. The paper will discuss Grice’s cooperative principles. Generosity and Tact Maxims Leech used Grice’s idea of cooperative principle when developing his pragmatic framework of explaining politeness. To Leech, politeness is a regulative element in human interaction. Leech explains that people convey meaning indirectly. Politeness is the key pragmatic element for indirectness, and it accounts for why people do not always comply with conversational principles. Leech takes time to distinguish a speaker’s illocutionary goal from his or her social utterance (Bayraktarog?lu 2001, p. 32). This defines the difference between a speaker’s intended action and his position. The speaker’s position could be truthfulness, politeness, or irony. Leech’s pragmatic framework has both textual and interpersonal rhetoric. According to Leech, politeness is in the interpersonal rhetoric domain. This domain comprises Grice’s cooperative principle, politeness principle and irony principle. The irony principle allows speakers to hide impoliteness while faking politeness on the outside. The principle breaks the conversational principle and contravenes the politeness principle. Even so, the speaker uses implicature indirectly to get to his or her point of utterance. The conversational principle interacts with the politeness principle and each has its maxims (Bousfield 2008, p. 17). Conversational principle and its maxims provide a way of interpreting how indirect messages feature in utterance. The politeness principle accounts for why speakers prefer to use indirectness. These two principles are in constant conflict, and this conflict makes speakers to choose one over another. Choosing the conversational principle over the politeness principle has the effect of jeopardizing social equilibrium and friendly relations. This sparks off doubt about the cooperation of interlocutors. Leech’s maxims bear pragmatic scales that help hearers to assess a speaker’s level of generosity or tact in a certain speech situation (Davis 2007, p. 62). The cost-benefit scale helps speakers to assess the costs and benefits involved for both themselves and the hearers. Optionality scale refers to the degree to which an action constitutes a hearer’s choice. The indirectness scale spells out the amount of inference carried in the action. Authority scale defines the distance that comes from the difference between the powers of the speakers. The level of solidarity between the participating parties manifests clearly, in social distance scale. Increased costs and social distance increase need for indirectness and the need for the speaker to increase his efforts to provide the hearer with many choices. Leech held that maxims differ in the quality of their importance. For instance, he believed that the generosity maxim is less powerful than tact maxim. He claimed that politeness has more to do with the addressee than it have to do with the speaker. Commentators have, however, expressed that it is difficult to tell how much a maxim focuses on the addressee. To these commentators, different cultures place varying emphasis on different maxims. Each of Leech’s maxim has a sub-maxim (Mesthrie et. al. 2009, p. 40). He believed that sub-maxims are less important than maxims. Commentators construe this to imply that negative politeness is more important than positive politeness. The generosity and tact maxims are of interest to this paper. The generosity maxim requires actors to minimize their benefit and maximize their cost. The generosity maxim applies in commissives and impositives and focuses on speakers. Its first criterion is minimizing benefit to the self, and maximizing cost to self is the second criteria. Generosity maxim can be explained using a set of statements. “You can lend me your suit” and “I must enjoy a ride in your car” are impolite statements by the generosity maxim. This is because the two statements imply benefit to the other but does not indicate the cost to self (Watts 2005, p. 23). On the other hand, the generosity maxim will interpret the statements, “I can lend you my suit” and “You must take a ride in my car” as being polite. This is because they imply a benefit to another person and a cost to the self. These two statements are utterances involving directive illocutionary acts. The illocutionary element of recommending brings out the truth in generosity maxim. For instance, a speaker may tell a friend, “it is none of my business really, but you look more beautiful in the grey suit than in the black one. If I were you, I would buy the grey one.” In the first part of this statement, the speaker reduces his or her concern to a minimum. In the second part though, the speaker announces that he or she would prefer seeing the friend in the grey suit rather than in the black one (Andersen 2001, p. 22). The tact maxim works with directives and impositives that only apply in illocutionary functions. Impositives include recommending, commanding, requesting, and advising. Commissives include offering, promoting, and vowing. Tact maxim focuses more on the hearer than the speaker. According to Leech, tact maxim involves minimization of cost and maximization of benefit for the recipient (Andersen 2001, p. 24). This spells out its two criteria; minimize the cost to the hearer, and maximize the benefit to the hearer. The maxim can be explained using a statement, “You know, I really think you ought to sell that printer. It is consuming a lot of money, and it guzzles ink.” In the statement, the speaker fulfils the criteria of tact maxim by using discourse markers. The first part of the statement demonstrates how the speaker minimizes cost to his hearer. The portion, “You know…”, appeals to the solidarity between the speaker and his or her addressee. The word, “really”, acts as a modifying hedge while “I…do think”, represents an attitudinal predicate. The word “ought” is the modal verb in the statement. In the second part of the statement, the speaker maximizes the benefit to the hearer by showing him how selling the printer will help him save time and money (Bayraktarog?lu 2001, p. 33). The statement “Sell your printer” is impolite because it does not show how it is minimizing the cost on the hearer, and neither is it indicating how it will maximize the benefit to the hearer. Rather, it shows the speaker’s irritation with the other person’s behavior. On the whole, the speaker seeks to make the hearer feel that they do not have high costs. The maxim underscores the size of the activity the hearer has to do. This is what Leech calls imposition. Minimizers such as a bit, just, and a few reduce the cost on the hearer. Another important element of the maxim is the mitigation of the effect of a request by providing optionality. The speaker provides the addressee with the choice to affirm or reject the imposition. High indirectness requires high optionality (Bousfield 2008, p. 18). The politeness is high when there is a high option of the hearer not granting the imposition. The addressee has the responsibility of weighing out the cost and benefit involved in granting the imposition. There exists ways of expressing the imposition without having to use indirectness. Even so, high imposition requires people to use indirectness so as to minimize the cost. By and large, tact derives from people’s desire to maintain face, their fear of losing face, and their hesitation in depriving others face. Individuals in the society maintain the balance of respect and preserving face. Tactfulness helps them achieve this and avoid conflicts. Tact goes beyond being socially correct to being interpersonally supportive. Instead of acting in a way that threatens, offends and injures others, tactful individual empathizes with others (Bayraktarog?lu 2001, p. 34). This requires the individual to modify their verbal and nonverbal activities. To do this, verbal messages can be modulated using non-verbal and kinesic messages. Politeness sometimes requires speakers to communicate their feelings indirectly, for example, when handling an uncomfortable topic. Using tact, individuals vary intonations to change commands into requests and make criticisms in a friendly tone, they smile at one another and gaze at one another. There is a difference between tact and social politeness. Social politeness regulates mechanical exchange of activities and roles amongst individuals during social interaction. Tact, on the other hand, preserves face and regulates interpersonal relationships (Bousfield 2008, p. 19). It helps people avoid interpersonal conflicts. Tact depends on multimodal skills of communication that derive from social interactions. Development of tact skills varies across cultures and members of one culture can misunderstand the communicative skills of the members of other cultures. Even so, cultural differences are not entirely responsible for all of these misunderstandings. There are certain universal characteristics that make conflicts in the society to persist irrespective of all measures to avoid them. The impulse to confront or avoid confrontation has its basis in human biology (Davis 2007, p. 63). Evolutionary commentators agree with this notion saying that tact seems to be an adaptive response. They purport that tact is an adaptive response to universal, innate and biologically-generated conflicts arising from the interaction between members of the same species. These commentators add that there are a number of issues that individuals constantly renegotiate during interaction. Politeness requires the consideration of those who are more dominant, assertive, and stronger than others in the interaction. Individuals also renegotiate the feelings or attraction and repulsion towards each other. The other issue that individuals have to renegotiate is the intensity of the feelings they have towards each other. Tact helps people to avoid and regulate conflicts when negotiating these issues. It helps address two fundamental face needs (Mesthrie et. al. 2009, p. 41). The first one is the need to feel free, unobstructed, and self-determining within a firm internal preserve. The second is the need for respect, appreciation and acceptance. The first need is the need for the personal face, and the second is the need for interpersonal face. Interpersonal commentators observe that these needs are somehow antithetical. Personal autonomy comes when an individual gives up some interpersonal acceptance. On the other hand, interpersonal acceptance comes with the loss of some personal autonomy. Personal and interpersonal face need clash forcing individuals to come up with highly complex face saving strategies (Davis 2007, p. 64). Requests, suggestions, different opinions, criticism, or commands can be construed to be implicit threats to face. As such, individuals may respond to such things with reduced self-assertion, and acceptance for the other person. It is for a fact that tact has a number of assumptions underpinning it acquired by individuals automatically as they grow up. As people grow up, they come to understand that for them to be affirmed as normal they have to infer about their experience similar to those of others. Failure to do this invites labels such as deviant, defective, retard, or abnormal. Growing up into normal members of a culture entails learning the behaviors, thoughts, and perceptions similar to those of others (Andersen 2001, p. 23). Tact develops through interaction with other people in different situations so as to acquire broad frameworks of beliefs, expectations, experience and common knowledge. Tact maxim, by implication, helps in the understanding of the essentials and importance of tactful communication. Without these things, individuals would not think about how their behaviors project on to a generalized other or consider other people’s interpretation. After cultural assumptions develop, they become fairly unwavering and influences social interaction almost automatically. The events that clash with them do not change them but come out as abnormal and incorrect. This makes cultural assumptions nonnegotiable bases of human tact. As people from different cultures interact, important elements of these nonnegotiable bases could miss (Bayraktarog?lu 2001, p. 35). This leads to breakdown of communication as the behaviors of these individuals stop making sense. Sociolinguistic Factors in Politeness In many cultures gender and age are important determinants of power. To many, men are more powerful than women, just as elders enjoy higher privileges than youth. There are factors that influence power that are specific to domains, for example, the relationship between interviewer and interviewee. The notion that women are less powerful than men does not hold when tried with other factors (Davis 2007, p. 66). For example, the status of women as bosses affects their politeness. A comparison between men and women of high status, though, serves to justify the role of gender in politeness. Lakoff observed that women are more polite than men. To Lakoff, women’s language exudes powerlessness. Lackoff articulated several properties of the language of women including tag questions and politeness tokens hedges. Lackoff talked about women’s talk with the notion that they stem from obsolete social expectations and not in innate tendencies. While women almost always use polite language, there is an expectation on men to use polite language when around women. There are commentators who reject the notion that women are the polite gender. These commentators claim that such notions are stereotypical (Mesthrie et. al. 2009, p. 43). They further argue that this politeness does not exist it is just that the members of a culture assume that it exists. The role of gender in politeness manifests in gender dyads within a conversation. Gender in this case is an interaction between speaker and hearer. This is a good representation of power as it defines the difference between the speaker and hearer. Brown discussed the role of gender dyads while looking at the expression of expression inTenejapa, in Mexico. Using this study, she articulated positive and negative politeness elements (Watts 2005, p. 25). In her study, women came out as more polite than men. The study did not find total politeness difference between women’s language towards men and vice versa. The study revealed that women use more negative politeness tokens when addressing women than when addressing men, and more positive politeness when talking to men than when talking to women. Those who conducted this study discovered that men are more polite while in cross-gender dyads than while in their gender. Brown accepted the idea that the gender of the hearer affects the expression of politeness. Another study looked at the difference between set politeness tokens in both same-gender and cross-gender dyads (Andersen 2001, p. 25). They categorized linguistic tokens as male traits and female traits. Males display a bigger number of male traits while in same dyads. So do women display more female traits while in same-gender dyads than when in cross-gender dyads. Both men and women use more false starts and hedges when talking to individuals of the same sex than to other individuals in cross-gender dyads. Eckert and McConnell-Ginet used community of practice to explain how traits associated with gender strengthen in same-gender dyads. Community of practice defines how groups correspond to social order. In a community of practice, the roles and behaviors of group members determine their place in and across the group. According to Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, gender groups are a community of practice and communication that happen in same-gender groups is the gender practice (Bayraktarog?lu 2001, p. 36). Gender practices support behavior associated with gender in defining group identity. Age is an important factor in the acquisition of politeness. Studies reveal that children develop appropriate usage of politeness by age nine. At infancy, children are able to detect forms of politeness that are gender-appropriate. Some people looking at power from an intuitive point of view, believe that the youth are less powerful than adults and thus treat adults with politeness. A study required that individuals indicate how much politeness they accord older individuals. The young indicated that they would give the most politeness, followed by the middle-aged and finally the older age group registering the least level of politeness (Bousfield 2008, p. 21). Another study disapproved this trend when it revealed that young Japanese men used few polite forms seniors followed, and the middle-aged were the most polite. This study observed the use of polite verbal forms by Japanese men. The study revealed that the young and middle-aged men are in the extreme poles because they spend most of their time in their age groups. This serves to reinforce age group practices in their community of practice. The norm of impoliteness preoccupies young men, while high politeness preoccupies middle-aged men due to expectations and constraints in the workplace (Davis 2007, p. 67). Middle-aged men’s involvement in the workplace invests them to the linguistic market. The linguistic market requires the middle-aged to be polite and use standard language. Social distance is a function of the differences and similarities between individuals influenced by the frequency with which these individuals interact. There is a direct relationship between social distance and politeness. Increase in the distance between speakers increases the politeness between them. Geoffrey Leech supported this idea and offered that a reduction of the horizontal distance between individuals causes a reduction in the need for politeness. The need for politeness reduces until it reaches the point of non-politeness or impoliteness. High social distance builds on face threatening acts (Mesthrie et. al. 2009, p. 44). Spencer-Oatey conceptualized politeness in the context of interactional goals and rapport management. She observed that a speaker can have several goals in an interaction depending on how she intends to influence the level of rapport between himself or herself and the hearer. Speakers may have several rapport orientations in an interaction. In rapport-enhancement, politeness is high while, in rapport challenge, it is low (Watts 2005, p. 26). A speaker’s attitudes towards social distance influence their level of politeness, and this cannot be looked at as a binary relationship. Liking is a central factor in social distance, and it is similar to Spencer-Oatey’s notion of rapport orientation. The relationship between rapport management and social distance is not one of correlation but of plausible overlap. This justifies why a speaker and a hearer who have a big social distance will not have rapport-maintenance orientation. A dyad with high social distance does not have a rapport-challenging orientation. The maintenance of a given orientation requires both an uncooperative speaker and an existing relationship. There are several motives that can justify a rapport-challenging orientation. One may be the need of asserting personal independence, refusing a romantic advance, or repay a previous offence (Andersen 2001, p. 26). All of these motives need an existing relationship unexpected in dyads of high social distance. Rapport-enhancement and rapport-maintenance orientations characterize social dyads of low social distance, so in a friendly relationship. Rapport-challenge and rapport-neglect orientation are typical of dyads of low social distance when the relationship is bad. On the other hand, rapport-management orientation will scarcely be an element of close relationships including family relationships. This is because, in a family relationship the orientation is nonnegotiable (Bayraktarog?lu 2001, p. 37). From its inception, family is a close relationship. As seen above, there are a number of sociolinguistic factors that are important in politeness. This include, gender, age, and social distance. Grice’s Cooperative Principle The works of Austin and Searle focused on understanding of the relationship between indirect and direct speech. This was a departure from the truth values model, reliance on reference, and sense as sources of meaning. It drew from a need to understand utterances’ meaning beyond that of sentences. Indirect speech acts can convey an intended meaning (Bousfield 2008, p. 22). Grice’s point of entry into this endeavor was to understand the difference between what speaker's actual language and their intention. He sought to understand how speakers elicit implicit meanings and how they (speakers) know that their addressees will decode the intended meaning. He used this principle to explain how the cooperation between individuals follows maxims. The principle shapes an individual’s contribution in the right form, conveyed at the right time, and for the right purpose of the exchange involved. Levinson qualified the principle as a theory of communication (Davis 2007, p. 68). This is because it provides an account of how possible communication is even without conventional means of expressing intended meaning. It offers an account of how communication can do well especially using his notion of non-natural meaning. He proposed four maxims that are principles of conversations. The maxim of quantity states that an individual’s contribution needs to be optimally informative. To Grice, contribution should achieve intended purpose without any excess or limitation. An example in a statement is the answer to the question, “what is the time?” A possible answer that flouts the maxim of quantity is, “it is four o’clock, in fact it is half past four, and it is on Monday.” The respondent has answered the question in such a way that he or she has provided a lot of extra information about time. Excessive information puts off the listener. The maxim of quality requires that individuals provide true contributions (Mesthrie et. al. 2009, p. 45). Grice believed that, for a speaker to be well understood, they need to say things that are true or things for which they have evidence. An example of the application of this maxim in a conversation is the answer to the question, “what is the capital city of the United States?” The possible answer to this question is, “I believe it is California, or maybe Washington. The United States has a wide territory.” The respondent is providing information for which he or she cannot support. The maxim of relation requires that individuals make contributions related to the topic. The maxim could be used to assess a person’s level of attention to the conversation in which they engage (Watts 2005, p. 27). A possible violation of this maxim is the answer to a simple question, “have you finished your meal?” The respondent flouts the maxim of relation when he or she answers, “I saw her on my way to school.” There is no connection between finishing the meal, and seeing whoever it is that the respondent saw on his or her way to school. The maxim of manner prescribes that utterance be made with clarity, brevity and order without ambiguity and obscurity. A good way to understand this maxim is to consider how this maxim can be flouted by an advertisement. A possible advertisement is “it is sweet.” This statement is not clear, and its utterance can only leave the listener guessing for the most likely answer. Grice purports that there is a way accepted as the standard behavior. Individuals believe that an utterance they produce or receive is true, has all needed information, is relevant and that it will be understandable (Andersen 2001, p. 27). The lack of these things makes individuals believe that they need to infer the appropriate meaning. Grice argues that when this happens, a maxim flouts resulting into an implicature. The worth of investing effort into interpreting an indirect speech act lies in such an assumption. This is what embodies the basic exposition of the cooperation principle, maxims and implicatures. As such, many proceed to finding the cooperation principle in language use. This is in things such as infringing, opting out, violations, and flouts (Bayraktarog?lu 2001, p. 38). Grice purported that there is a calculable relationship between the conventional meaning of an utterance and its implicit meaning. Speakers use this pattern to make it hard for hearers to make out what they mean. Speakers communicate their utterances in many ways and leave it upon the hearers to calculate their (speakers’) intentions. The cooperative principle does not make the hearers’ work easy, rather, it makes it even harder. Using the cooperative principle, the speaker can leave out some information or include a non-literal utterance and expect the hearer to work out the meaning. Implicature is important in understanding what the speaker intends with his or her utterances. The explicit meaning of a speakers’ utterance can be worked out by projecting the semantic meaning of the speaker’s words. This needs to be followed with a keen study of the syntactical structure of the speaker’s language (Bousfield 2008, p. 23). Understanding the implicit meaning of a speaker’s utterance requires a careful study of the utterance’s implicatures. Conventional implicature and conversational implicature are the two implicatures identified by Grice. To understand the two, it is important to consider two statements; (i) John got drunk, and Nancy was pleased, and (ii) John got drunk, but Nancy was happy. The conjunction ‘and’ in the first statement means that John’s drunkenness pleases Nancy. The conjunction ‘but’ in the second statement implies contradiction. It means that John’s drunkenness makes Nancy unhappy or displeased. The two conjunctions are the keys to understanding the meaning of the speaker’s utterances. This is because the meaning of the utterances is similar to that of their structures (Davis 2007, p. 69). This explains a conventional implicature whose understanding lies in the structure of the utterance. Conversational implicature depends on the context of the utterance, and hence it derives from the cooperative principle. It comes out in conversation so that it is implicit in the speaker’s actual language. Consider two statements; (i) Has George arrived? And (ii) There is a blue car in the garage. The second statement answers the question in the first statement (Mesthrie et. al. 2009, p. 46). It carries the implicature that George drives a blue car and because the respondent had seen a blue car in the garage, he or she (respondent) assumed that George must have arrived. Grice’s cooperative principle is a fundamental concept in pragmatics. In conclusion, Geoffrey Leech borrowed a lot from Grice’s cooperative principle to come up with his principle of politeness. He equated it to Grice’s cooperative principle. In the politeness principle, he identified several maxims, for which he purported that each has a sub-maxim. The principle of Generosity and Tact can only help understand politeness in as far as impositives and commissives apply. Gender, age and social distance are important sociolinguistic factors in politeness. Grice’s cooperative principle has several maxims that help to explain how different meanings ought to be communicated in the society. References List Andersen, G. (2001). Pragmatic markers and sociolinguistic variation: a relevance-theoretic approach to the language of adolescents. Amsterdam [u.a.], Benjamins. p. 21 - 27 Bayraktarog?lu, A. (2001). Linguistic politeness across boundaries: the case of Greek and Turkish. Amsterdam [u.a.], Benjamins. p. 32–38. Bousfield, D. (2008). Impoliteness in interaction. Amsterdam, John Benjamins Pub. p. 17 - 23 Davis, W. A. (2007). Implicature: intention, convention, and principle in the failure of Gricean theory. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. p. 62 –69. Mesthrie, R., Swann, J., Deumert, A., & Leap, W. (2009). Introducing sociolinguistics. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press. p. 40-46 Watts, R. J. (2005). Politeness in language: studies in its history, theory and practice. Berlin [u.a.], de Gruyter. p. 23–27. Read More