Grice's Maxims

Maxim of Relevance

In a recent conversation with a colleague, I was guilty of violating this Maxim.  My colleague asked me about something that was clearly at the time very important to her, and I answered with something completely irrelevant!  This colleague is a first-year teacher who often consults me with ideas, problems or questions.  She came to me to ask about how I would handle a situation with an individual student.  In her explanation of the problem, she mentioned “assessment” and instead of answering her specific question, I started talking about the end of year assessment we had recently worked on developing.

I completely changed the topic of our conversation.  I did catch myself and said, “nevermind, I apologize for changing the topic, we can talk about the assessment later” but I still felt badly about the conversation.

                 Maxim of Quality

I often find that students, among many others, violate this maxim.  They sometimes either say what you want to hear instead of communicating how they really feel and sometimes use sarcasm to indicate that what they are saying is false but meant to be entertaining.  In April, I asked a student why he did not have his homework.  Instead of giving me a “quality” answer, he responded that he did not do his homework because the world was coming to an end that weekend.  It was clear through the sarcasm in his voice that he did not actually believe this, but was trying to be funny.

Maxim of Quantity

Me:  What time do you think we should leave to get to your sister’s tomorrow.

Husband:  Whenever.

 This is a conversation that happens too frequently.  Some would agree that it was clear that I was asking for a specific time as part of his answer.  His unclear and unspecific answer got us no closer to making a plan for the next day.

Maxim of Manner

 

I observed a conversation between two colleagues the morning of our last day at school.

 Colleague 1 says,  “Do you think you’ll ever see the sun this summer?”

Colleague 2 did not understand exactly what he meant and said, “Why do you say that?  I’m not working that many hours this summer.” And he responds, “No, I meant if you are going to reorganize all those papers and books over there, you’ll be here all summer.”  She was visibly annoyed by his comment, beyond the fact that she didn’t have any idea what he was talking about until she asked for clarification.