从会话含义角度解读《老友记》的言语幽默效果(3)
Just like the rule that countries at war do not kill messengers from their enemies (Jiang Wangqi, 1999: 37), CP is just like a set of rules which people sometimes follow, and sometimes do not follow. Armed forces do kill messengers from the other part to show their military strength or their determination to win a war; similarly, people do break CP rules to endow their sentences with implicature.
So it can be generalized that when people do not observe CP and deliberately violate those CP rules, implicature is usually created (He Ziran & Ran Yongping, 2006: 70). In other words, in order to discover implicature, it is a requirement for people to be familiar with those specific CP rules and to be sensible when they are violated.
2.2.2 Four Maxims of Cooperative Principle
Four specific CP rules(four maxims), are raised by Grice, under which some sub-maxims are added to make each maxim more concrete and complete. The four maxims are : maxim of Quantity, maxim of Quality, maxim of Relation, and maxim of Manner.
2.2.2.1 Maxim of Quantity
The maxim of Quantity relates to the quantity of providing information. Here are two sub-maxims:
Ⅰ Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange).
Ⅱ Do not make your contribution more informative than is required. (Grice, 1975: 26)
Grice (1975: 28) compared this maxim with mending a car:
“If you are assisting me to mend a car, I expect your contribution to be neither more nor less than is required. If for example, at a particular stage I need four screws, I expect you to hand me four, rather than two or six. ”
Generally speaking, people who follow this maxim will try to provide as much as needed information to the listeners.
2.2.2.2 Maxim of Quality
This maxim deals with the quality of information, two sub-maxims are as follows:
Ⅰ Do not say what you believe to be false.
Ⅱ Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence. (Grice, 1975: 26)
So this maxim is about the quality of information, and if people conform to it, true information will be provided, as Grice (1975: 27) said:
“I expect your contributions to be genuine and not spurious. If I need sugar as an ingredient in the cake you are assisting me to make, I do not expect you to hand me salt; if I need a spoon, I do not expect a trick spoon made of rubber.”
2.2.2.3 Maxim of Relation
Grice’s explanation of this maxim was “Be relevant.” But Grice also admitted that many questions remained unsolved related to this maxim, like “what different kinds and focuses of relevance there may be” and “how these shift in the course of a talk change” (Grice, 1975: 29). However, if this maxim is to be observed in this paper, it means that people will respond to others by saying something which at least has some relation to the previous content. Grice’s (1975: 28) comparison was as follows:
“I expect a partner’s contribution to be appropriate to the immediate needs at each stage of the transaction. If I am mixing ingredients for cake, I do not expect to be handed a good book, or even cloth.”
2.2.2.4 Maxim of Manner
The maxim of Manner has little interest in what is said by the speaker, rather, this maxim focuses on understanding how something is said and the way something is conveyed. Its four sub-maxims are as follows:
Ⅰ Avoid obscurity of expression.
Ⅱ Avoid ambiguity.
Ⅲ Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).
Ⅳ Be orderly. (Grice, 1975:27)
Grice’s (1975: 28) comparison of this maxim was as follows:
“I expect a partner to make it clear what contribution he is making and to execute his performance with reasonable dispatch.”
All in all, Grice (2002) regarded that a cooperative speaker who follows all the four maxims in CP should speak clearly, briefly, relevantly, and provide true and right amount of information.