 As functions may not correspond to forms, speech acts can be direct and indirect.

     Searle: two ways of communication (performing acts)

     Direct speech act: Close the door.

     Indirect speech act: It’s cold in here.

     Why do people often speak indirectly in social communication?

     Different social variables: age, sex, social condition

     Politeness: communicative strategy

     Indirect speech acts are related to appropriateness.

     Indirect speech acts are made for politeness, not vice versa. To make appropriate choices does not necessarily mean indirect speech acts.

     Cooperation and implicature

     Conversational Implicature

     In our daily life, speakers and listeners involved in conversation are generally cooperating with each other. In other words, when people are talking with each other, they must try to converse smoothly and successfully. In accepting speakers’ presuppositions, listeners have to assume that a speaker is not trying to mislead them. This sense of cooperation is simply one in which people having a conversation are not normally assumed to be trying to confuse, trick, or withhold relevant information from one another.

     However, in real communication, the intention of the speaker is often not the literal meaning of what he or she says. The real intention implied in the words is called conversational implicature. For example:

    [1] A: Can you tell me the time?

    B: Well, the milkman has come.

     In this little conversation, A is asking B about the time, but B is not answering directly. That indicates that B may also not no the accurate time, but through saying “the milkman has come”, he is in fact giving a rough time. The answer B gives is related to the literal meaning of the words, but is not merely that. That is often the case in communication. The theory of conversational implicature is for the purpose of explaining how listeners infer the speakers’ intention through the words.

     The study of conversational implicature starts from Grice (1967), the American philosopher. He thinks, in daily communication, people are observing a set of basic rules of cooperating with each other so as to communicate effectively through conversation. He calls this set of rules the cooperative principle (CP) elaborated in four sub-principles (maxims), that is the cooperative principle.

     The Cooperative Principle

     Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged. The maxims are:

     Quantity

     Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange).

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

     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 adequate evidence.

     Relation – Be relevant.

     Manner – Be perspicuous.

     Avoid obscurity of expression.

     Avoid ambiguity.

     Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).

     Be orderly.

     We assume that people are normally going to provide an appropriate amount of information, i.e. they are telling the relevant truth clearly. The cooperative principle given by Grice is an idealized case of communication.

     However, there are more cases that speakers are not fully adhering to the principles. But the listener will assume that the speaker is observing the principles “in a deeper degree”. For example:

    [2] A: Where is Bill?

    B: There is a yellow car outside Sue’s house.

     In [2], the speaker B seems to be violating the maxims of quantity and relation, but we also assume that B is still observing the CP and think about the relationship between A’s question and the “yellow car” in B’s answer. If Bill has a yellow car, he may be in Sue’s house.