Manner
Be perspicuous.
1. Avoid obscurity of expression.
2. Avoid ambiguity.
3. Be brief (avoid prolixity).
4. Be orderly.
CP is meant to describe what actually happens in conversation. That is, when we speak we generally have something like the PC and its maxims in our mind to guide us, though subconsciously or consciously.
= Violation of the Maxims
People don’t always follow these Maxims. They do violate them and tell lies. The speaker may have shown that some maxims are violated, but at a deeper level the CP can still be thought to be upheld.
Some of these violations give rise to conversational implicatures.
= Characteristics of Implicature
At the end, we may summarize conversational Implicature as a type of implied meaning, which is deduced on the basis of the conventional meaning of words together with the context, under the guidance of the CP and its maxims. In this sense, implicature is comparable to illocutionary force in speech art theory in that they are both concerned with the contextual side of meaning, or 言外之意 in Chinese. And these two theories differ only in the mechanisms they offer for explaining the generation of contextual meaning.
Ÿ Characters of Implicature
1) Calculability
The fact that speaker try to convey conversational implicatures and hearers are able to understand them suggests that implicatures are calculable.
2) Cancellability
Cancellability is also known as Defeasibility. That is, a conversational Implicature may be cancelled.
3) Non-detachability
It means that a conversational implicature is attached to the semantic content of what is said, not to the linguistic form. Therefore it is possible to use a synonym and keep the implicature intact.
4) Non-conventionality
Conversational implicature is by definition different from the conventional meaning of words. For example, the logical relationship—entailment, is part of the conventional meaning, and it is determinate in all contexts. In contrast, implicature is indeterminate, which varies with the context.
(Entailment: this is a logic relationship between two sentences in which the truth of the second necessarily follows from the truth of the first, while the falsity of the first follows from the falsity of the second. For example, when “I saw a boy” is true, “I saw a child” is necessarily true; and if “I saw a child” is not true, “I saw a boy” will not be true either.)
« Post-Gricean Developments
= Relevance Theory
This theory was formally proposed by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson. They argue that all Gricean maxims, including the CP itself, should be reduced to a single principle of relevance, which is defined as:
Every act of ostensive communication communicates the presumption of its own optimal relevance.
The assessment of relevance, like the assessment of productivity, is a matter of balancing output against input. That is, every utterance comes with a presumption of the best balance of effort against effect. On the one hand, the effects achievable will never be less than is needed to make it worth processing. On the other hand, the effort required will never be more than is needed to achieve these effects.
= The Q- and R- principles
These two principles were developed by Laurence Horn. and Horn proposed to reduce all the Grice’s maxims to two principles as:
The Q-principle (Hearer-based)
Make your contribution sufficient (cf. Quantity)
Say as much as you can (given R)
The R-principle (Speaker-based)
Make your contribution necessary (cf. Relation, Quantity2, Manner)
Say no more than you must (given Q)
The hearer-based Q-principle is a sufficiency condition in the sense that information provided is the most the speaker is able to. In other words, the Q-principle is concerned with the content. The speaker who follows this principle supplies the sufficient information.
The R-principle, in contrast, encourages the hearer to infer that more is meant. In other words, it is concerned with the form. The speaker who employs this principle uses the minimal form, so that the hearer is entitled to infer that the speaker means more than says.
Horn observes that the Q-based and R-based principles often directly collide. And he suggests this resolution comes from a division of pragmatic labour as follows:
The use of a marked (relatively complex and/or prolix冗长的) expression when a corresponding unmarked (simpler, less “effortful”) alternate expression is available tends to be interpreted as conveying a marked message (one which the unmarked alternative would not or could not have conveyed).
= The Q-, I- and M- principles
This tripartite [traiˈpɑ:tait] 三重的 model was suggested by Stephen Levinson.
Recently, levinson also calls his principles “heuristics”. There are three “heuristics” as follows:
Heuristic 1
What isn’t said, isn’t.
Heuristic 2
What is simply described is stereotypically exemplified例证.
Heuristic 3
What’s said in an abnormal way, isn’t normal; or Marked message indicates marked situation.
The first heuristic, he also calls “Q-Heuristic”, is more or less transparently related to Grice’s first Maxim of Quantity. It is responsible for two types of implicatures: scalar [ˈskeilə] 分等级的 inplicatures and clausal 分句的implicatures.
The second heuristic also known as “I-Heuristic” may be related directly to Grice’s second Maxim of Quantity. The underlying idea is, of course, that one need not say what can be taken for granted.
The third heuristic, also known as “M-Heuristic”, can be related directly to Grice’s Maxim of Manner. The underlying idea here is that there is an implicit opposition or parasitic [ˌpærəˈsitik] 寄生的 relationship between our second and third heuristics: what is said simply, briefly, in an unmarked way picks up the stereotypical interpretation; if in contrast a marked expression is used, it is suggested that the stereotypical interpretation should be avoided.
补充：《英语语言学考点测评》p111-19
P Chapter 5 Meaning
«Semantics
Semantics is the study of the meaning of linguistic units, words and aentences in particular.
«Meanings of “Meaning”
G. Leech in a more moderate tone recognized 7 types of meaning in his Semantics, as follows:
1. Conceptual meaning
Leech says the conceptual meaning makes up the central part. It is logical, cognitive, or denotative meaning. It is “denotative外延的” in that it is concerned with the relationship between a word and the thing it demotes, or refers to.
2. Connotative meaning
3. Social meaning
4. Affective meaning
5. Reflected meaning
6. Collocative meaning
7. Thematic meaning
«The Referential Theory
The theory of meaning which relates the meaning of a word to the thing it refers to, or stands for, is known as the Referential Theory指称论. It is generally possible to explain the meaning of a word by pointing to the thing it refers to.
Ogden and Richards in The Meaning of Meaning proposed the semantic triangle, they argue that the relation between a words and a thing it refers to is not direct. It is mediated by concept.
That is, there is something behind the concrete thing. And that something is abstract, which has no existence in the material world and can only be sensed in our minds. This abstract thing is usually called Concept.
In a diagram form, the relation is represented as follows:
concept
word thing
Leech also uses sense as a briefer term for his conceptual meaning. And “sense” is equivalent to “concept”. So the distinction between “sense” and “reference” is comparable to that between “connotation内涵” and “denotation外延”. In other words, Leech’s conceptual meaning has two sides: sense and reference.
To some extent, we can say every word has a sense, but not every word has a reference. Therefore people suggest that we should study meaning in terms of sense rather than reference.
«Sense Relations
Words are in different sense relations with each other. The sense of a word may be seen as the network of its sense relations with others. In other words, sense may be defined as the semantic relations between one word and another. It is concerned with the intralinguistic relations.
There are generally three kinds of sense relations recognized, namely, sameness relation, oppositeness relation and inclusiveness relation.
= Synonymy
Synonymy is the technical name for the sameness relation. But total synonymy is rare. The so-called synonyms are all context dependent. They all differ one way or another. For example, they may differ in style. They may also differ in connotations. And there are dialectal differences.
=Antonymy
Antonymy is the name for oppositeness relation. There are three main sub-types: gradable antonymy, complementary antonymy, and converse antonymy.
Ÿ Gradable antonymy
Gradable antonymy is the commonest type of antonymy. They have three characteristics.
First, they are gradable, i.e. the denial of one is not necessarily the assertion of the other. There’s something in between. Something which is not “good” is not necessarily “bad”. It may simply be “so-so” or “average”.
Second, there is no absolute criterion. They are graded against different norms. There is no absolute criterion by which we may say something is good or bad, long or short, big or small. The criterion varies with the object described.
Third, one member of a pair, usually the term for the higher degree, serves as the cover term. We ask somebody “How old are you?” and the person asked may not be old in any sense. The cover term is “unmarked”, or usual; and the covered one “marked”, or unusual. In general, it is the cover term that is more often used. If the covered one is used, then it suggests that there is something odd or unusual.
ŸComplementary antonymy
