Rick : Hey, coming to the wild party tonight? Tom : My parents are visiting.
From the conversation above, it seems that Tom’s response does not relevant with Rick questions. Hence, Rick has to draw some assumed
knowledge that one college student in this setting expects another to have. Rick makes some inferences that Tom will be spending time at
home with his parents tonight.
c. Cooperative Principle
The philosopher H. Paul Grice, in Meyer 2009:55 proposed the cooperative principle to explain how conversation involves a certain level of
“cooperation” among communicants: Our talk exchanges do not normally consist of succession of disconnected
remarks, and would not be rational if they did. They are characteristically, to some degree at least, cooperative efforts; and each participant
recognizes in them, to some extent, a common purpose or set of purposes, or at least a mutually accepted direction.
In order for them to be interpreted, some basic cooperative principle must first be assumed to be in operation. Grice develops cooperative principles into
four sub-principles called maxims. The four maxims that follow from the cooperative principle: quantity, quality, relation, and manner in Meyer, 2009;
Wardhaugh, 2006; Cutting, 2002; Yule, 1996 1
The Maxim of Quantity The maxim of quantity deals with the amount of information that delivered
by the speaker. This kind of maxim is about make your contribution as informative as is required and don’t make it more informative than is required.
It means that a speaker should be informative as is required and that they should give neither too little information nor too much. All communicants
must strike a balance between providing too much and too little information when they speak or write.
Some speakers like to point to the fact that they know how much information the hearer requires or can be bothered with and say something like
‘Well, to cut a long story short she didn’t get home till two.’ People who give too little information risk their hearer not being able to identify what they are
talking about because they are not explicit enough; those who give more information than what the hearer needs risk to bore them.
2 The Maxim of Quality
In the maxim of quality, a speaker should try to make your contribution one that is true. It requires you not to say what you believe to be false or that
for which you lack adequate evidence. Speakers are expected to be sincere, to be saying something that they believe corresponds to reality. They are
assumed not to say anything that believe to be false or anything for which they lack evidence. Some speakers like to draw their hearer’s attention to the fact
that they are only saying what they believe to be true and they lack adequate
evidence.
3 The Maxim of Relation
In the maxim of relation, speakers’ utterances should be relevant. The
speakers are assumed to be saying something that is relevant to what has been said before. Some speakers like to indicate how their comment has relevance
to their conversation. It requires the speakers’ statement relevant with the
topic.
4 The Maxim of Manner
In the maxim of manner, speakers should be brief and orderly, speaker points to the fact that he is observing the maxim. Manner requires you to
avoid obscurity of expression and ambiguity, and to be brief and orderly.
Speakers are required to make sure what you say is clear and unambiguous. d.
Presupposition
In several conditions, when communicating, speakers assume that certain information is already known and understood by the listeners. They think that
the information is generally known without mentioning it and then the listeners will comprehend that information correctly. Such condition in
communication is called presupposition. According to Griffiths 2006:143, presupposition is the shared background assumptions that are taken for
granted when people communicate. Shared background presuppositions are also the obvious starting point for a reader or listener wondering what the
author of a message might regard as relevant. Yule 1996:25 says that a presupposition is something that the speaker
assumes to be the case prior to making an utterance. Speakers typically express their assumptions by using many ways of expressions; hence there are
six types of presupposition.
1 Potential Presupposition
The linguistic forms a large number of words, phrases, and structures, expressed by the speakers which can only become actual presuppositions
in contexts with speakers.
2 Existential Presupposition
It is associated with a presupposition of existence. It is not only assumed to be present in possessive constructions, but more generally in any
definite noun phrase.
3 Lexical Presupposition
The use of one form with its asserted meaning is conventionally interpreted with the presupposition that another non-asserted meaning is
understood. 4
Structural Presupposition In this case, certain sentence structures have been analyzed as
conventionally and regularly presupposing that part of the structure is
already assumed to be true.
5 Non-factive Presupposition
It is the one that is assumed not to be true.
6 Counterfactual Presupposition
It means that what s presupposed is not only true, but is the opposite of what is true, or ‘contrary to facts.
e. Speech Acts
