Лекции по теоретической грамматике английского языка для студентов

 
2. The Cooperative principle and Grice’s maxims 
In 1975, H. P.Grice published a seminal article entitled "The Co-operative 
Principle" that created quite a stir on the linguistic scene and generated a large 
number of linguistic publications that built on Grice’s postulates. Paul Grice 
proposes that in ordinary conversation, speakers and hearers share a cooperative 
principle. The basic assumption is that any discourse, whether written or spoken, is 
a joint effort. Both the speaker and the addressee have to follow certain pragmatic, 
syntactic, and semantic rules in order to communicate effectively. They have to co-
operate. The Cooperative Principle is an attempt to show how 
speaker’s meaning 
arises from 
sentence meaning
. 
As phrased by Paul Grice, who introduced it, it states, "Make your 
contribution such as it is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted 
purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged." Though 
phrased as a prescriptive command, the principle is intended as a description of 
how people normally behave in conversation. Put more simply, people who obey 
the cooperative principle in their language use will make sure that what they say in 
a conversation furthers the purpose of that conversation. Obviously, the 
requirements of different types of conversations will be different. 
The cooperative principle can be divided into four maxims, called the 
Gricean maxims,
The principle can be explained by four underlying rules or maxims 
describing specific rational principles observed by people who obey the 
cooperative principle; these principles enable effective communication. (David 

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Crystal calls them 
conversational maxims
. They are also sometimes named