Definition Cooperative Principles Pragmatics

illustrated by H.P. Grice Leech, 1991: 8 which are elaborated in four sub-principles called maxims. The maxims in the cooperative principles are elaborated below. 1 Maxim of Quantity It is about giving the right amount of information such as making your contribution as informative as required which should not be too less and too much. The examples are presented below. a You can see me at 09.30 a.m. at my office. b You can see me at 09.30 a.m. at my office. However, if you don’t mind, we can just go outside and have lunch together discussing our ne w project. I’m extremely hungry. Yule, 1996: 37 The context of situation in the examples above is that the speaker intends to make an appointment with the speaker’s colleague. In utterance a the speaker has already fulfilled the maxim of quantity by being informative in giving the right time and place to the colleague without adding any other information. However, the pattern in utterance b contains too much information about the speaker’s intention which is not only to have a working meeting but also to have lunch. In this case, the speaker overlaps the knowledge that should be shared by both speakers which is to have a working meeting only. Thus the utterance in b flouts the maxim. 2 Maxim of Quality It is about trying to make your contribution that is true such as not saying something you believe to be false and lack of evidences. The examples are presented below. a I will be there at 10 o’clock sharp. Prepare what we’ve been discussing. b Emm, I will be there at about 10 o’clock if I’m not mistaken. You have to prepare what we’ve been discussing, right? The context of the situation in the examples above is the speaker promises to attend a meeting. These two people already agreed upon what they will be discussing in the meeting. In utterance a, the information given is accurate that the speaker without any doubt has no intention to come late and even understand what things to prepare. However, when looking at utterance b, there is an in dication that what the speaker’s utterances may not be totally true because she is not sure about when to come and what they should prepare before the meeting. Thus, the utterance in b flouts the maxim. 3 Maxim of Relation It is about making your contribution relevant such as saying something which is in line with the topic or the direction of the speaker that you try to engage with. The examples are presented below. a Someone is knocking the door Gale : I’m in the bath, Prime. b Someone is knocking the door Gale : I don’t really know if this is important, Prime, but what time is it? The context of situation in two examples above is different. In conversation a, the context is that there is someone calling on the phone. Gale expects Prime to understand that his reason is relevant to Prime’s assertion that even if there is someone knocking the door, Gale cannot go and see who it is because Gale is in the bath. However, at utterance b, it is assumed that the context is actually in a first date. There is a possibility for the speaker to have a non-relevant material because he wants to stop the dating for some reasons, so as to say getting bored with the situation or getting too late to go home. So, the speaker also seemingly likes to use expressions like ‘anyway’, ‘well’, ‘I don’t know if this is important’, ‘oh, by the way’, and so on. In that case, sentence b flouts the maxim. 4 Maxim of Manner It is about making your contribution perspicuous such as be brief and orderly. It can also be done by avoiding any obscurity of expression and ambiguity. The examples are presented below. a When I was 13, I vividly remembered the way I fell down from the tree. I was hospitalized for three days after that. I never want to climb a tree anymore since then. b This may be a bit confusing to me, but I remembered being in stairs’ accident. The context situation in the examples above is clearly described that there is a person who tries to tell how he felt down from the stairs when he was a kid. However, the utterance a is the only one that fulfils the maxim of manner. In utterance b, he tries to remember the event but it becomes more awkward since he could not actually remember what happened to him when he was a kid. These four maxims variably apply to different contexts of language use. They also can conflict each other. Even if the speaker breaks one of the maxims, it does not mean that she fails in any way to speak the English language. Breaking the maxims can be used to deceive or give misleading information which somehow can be considered as a normal conversation in which it also depends on the context situation.

2. Deixis

According to Yule 1996: 9 deixis means pointing via language. The language form that is used is the deictic expression which can also be called as indexicals. There are three kinds of deixis which are as follows.

a. Person Deixis

It operates on a basic three-part division which are defined with pronouns as first person ‘I’, second person ‘You’ and third person ‘She’, ‘He’, ‘It’. This deixis categories are elaborated with their relative social status such as whether the addressee has a higher status or not honorifics. The use of person deixis will be influenced by the relationship status of the speaker and addressee. The speaker tends to use different pointing when they talk to the people based on their age and economic status. For example, in French there is a diffe rent word to address “you” which are “tu” for the addressee who is considered as having the same age or social position or even cons idered as familiar, and “vous” for the addressee who is considered as having the different age, social position or non- familiar.

b. Spatial Deixis

Spatial deixis is the distance deixis. The spatial deixis are “here”, “this”, “that”, and “there”. “Here” and “this” are used to point the speaker’s position, and faraway things meanwhile “that” and “there” are used to point the faraway place or things. However, sometimes the use of this deixis can be different based on the speaker’s intention due to the existence of the deictic projection. This means that the speaker can project some location in which she is not there. For instance in the recorder of telephone machine. When someone calls and the speaker is not there, the machine will automatically answer “I’m not here, please leave a message.” It means that the speaker projects her presence to be in the required location. Another example is when the speaker tells a story and in the story she said “here”. It means the speaker tries to project the location in the story not in the place where she is now. Therefore, it is clear that spatial deixis is really close to phychological distance where physically close objects will tend to be treated by the speaker as phychological close and vice versa. However, sometimes the speaker can also treat physical close as physical distance for example “I don’t like that.” The word “that” in this sentence does not merely have the semantic meaning but a meaning based on the speaker’s context.

c. Temporal Deixis