Some Constraints of Consideration on Conversation: Interactions of Politeness and Relevance With Grice's Second Maxim of Quantity

In his by now well-known paper 'Logic and conversation' philosopher of language Paul Grice establishes four maxims speakers follow in conversing: maxims of quantity, quality, relation, and manner. The maxim of quantity he divides into two parts, saying that conversational participants must give enough information to each other, but must not give too much. However, after once establishing this maxim, Grice immediately casts doubt on its validity, saying that its second part is adequately covered by the maxim of relation, which states that what one says should be relevant--that is, that any remark that would be considered overinformative would be discounted by its being irrelevant, anyway, thus eliminating the need for the second half of the maxim of quantity.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Linguistics

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2014

Author dc:creator

• Donaldson, Susan Kay

• Language, Linguistics

Identifier

(UMI)AAI8502128

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/69822