#grice's maxims

[pawpunkao3]

Grice's Maxims and Tone Tags

What are Grice's Maxims?

Grice's Maxims are four qualities that people assume speech to have. People aren't explicitly taught these rules, and might not be able to put them into words, but through conversations, many people subconsciously pick up on them. The four maxims are:

The maxim of quantity: everything you say should contain as much information as needed to get your point across—no more, no less.

The maxim of quality: everything you say should, to the best of your knowledge, be true and supportable by evidence.

The maxim of relation: the things you say should be relevant to the topic at hand.

Maxim of manner: you should be clear, brief, and unambiguous in your speech.

Combined, these four maxims make up the Cooperative Principle—the idea that people should communicate with the intention that the other person will understand them.

How do People Use Grice's Maxims?

When people communicate, they usually subconsciously assume that other people are following these four rules of communication. That means that people will assume what someone is saying to them:

Contains the necessary information

Is true

Is related to the situation

And is not meant to be confusing.

These assumptions are what allow some people to understand a meaning in a sentence that was never actually stated. For example, take the following conversation:

A: I'm hungry. B: There's bread and jam in the fridge.

The maxim of relation tells A that B is telling them about the bread and jam because it's relevant to them being hungry, and the maxim of quantity tells A that B believes this to be sufficient information. From this, A can guess that B is inviting them to take some bread and jam and have a snack.

However, sometimes, people don't follow these Maxims. They can do so either by violating them or flouting them.

Violating is when someone doesn't follow the maxims and doesn't expect the other person to realize. If A said "I'm hungry" and B responded "there's no food in the house" when there was, B would just be lying. They're not trying to communicate.

Flouting is when someone doesn't follow the maxims and assumes the other person knows it. If B heard A say "I'm hungry" and responded, "there's no food left in the entire world", they would be flouting the maxim of quality, because that's not true. However, they don't want to lie to A—they're trying to make a joke. Successfully flouting a maxim requires that the other person realizes that you are breaking the maxim on purpose.

What are Tone Tags?

Some people (most commonly autistic people) struggle to pick up on social cues (such as Grice's Maxims and their uses) that others just get instinctively. Tone tags can be thought of as a way of making those maxims explicit, rather than just implied, so everyone can understand the text and subtext of a conversation.

Tone tags are typically written with a / (forward slash) followed by a word or abbreviation that denotes a specific tone. Commonly used tone tags are /j (joking), /hj (half-joking), /s (sarcasm), and /gen (genuine).

Why do Some People have Issues With Tone Tags?

Not all tone tags map clearly to a specific meaning. Some tone tags aren't immediately recognizable as having a specific meaning. For example, a person might interpret /s as serious, rather than sarcastic.

Furthermore, some tone tags might have an ambiguous meaning even if you know what they are short for. "Half-joking" isn't just one tone—it could mean anything from "this is a joke with a grain of truth" to "this is truthful, but I'm giving you leeway to take it as a joke if you don't wanna talk about it" to "this is a joke, but it's not a very good joke".

Some people may feel they are overused. Some people may tag every or nearly every statement they make, which can make people who don't need those tone tags feel like they are being belittled, or make them feel pressured to use tone tags on every sentence, too.

Some people may feel they are underused. Some people may not use tone tags, causing those who can't read tone well to miss out on the meaning of what they are saying.

Not every sentence has one meaning that can be easily summarized. Sometimes, a sentence may have more than one meaning. For example, one clause of a sentence may be sarcastic or joking, while another is sincere. Or, a sentence may be intended to be innocuous to most people, but an in-joke to the writer's friends. Using tone tags can remove that ambiguity, or even destroy one of the interpretations of the sentence.

People can misuse tone tags. In the worst cases, bad actors might write a truly cruel message, but tone tag it in a way that suggests it wasn't meant to hurt. In this case, the tone tag isn't meant to clarify tone, but to obscure it to anyone who might hold them accountable.

Fixing Tone Tags with Grice's Maxims

In my opinion, the best way to use tone tags is to always keep the Cooperative Principle in mind, both when tagging sentences and when interpreting them. Here is what I think would be useful:

Quantity:

Every sentence CAN have infinitely intricate tones. That doesn't mean it should. Use the fewest tone tags possible to communicate the tone of a sentence.

DON'T tag the "default tone" of a message. For example, tagging a request with /nf (not forced) could communicate that you think that the default tone for requests IS to force someone to do something. Because of this, although /nf is a non-aggressive tag, overusing it could actually make a situation seem more hostile.

Likewise, you don't have to tag every non-sarcastic statement with /gen (genuine).

Generally, if you aren't intentionally flouting a maxim, you probably won't need to tag your tone.

When flouting the maxim of quantity by providing too little or too much information for comedic purposes, it can be helpful to add a /j tag. If you're flouting it because there's something you don't want to say, tell your conversation partner to leave you alone.

Quality:

Generally, people try to tell the truth, so I'll skip right to...

When flouting the maxim of quality by lying on purpose, you need to make sure your conversation partner knows that you're lying with a tag like /s (sarcasm) or /lie. In my opinion, a /lie tag makes jokes like these funnier!

Relation:

If you're bringing up something that is related to the topic, but it's not obvious how, you can add a tone tag to clarify how it is related.

When flouting the maxim of relation by bringing up something unrelated, tone tags like /j can help clarify that it isn't supposed to be—or, you can just say that you're changing the topic.

Manner:

When using tone tags, make sure everybody knows what each one means (not just what it stands for, but what tone it communicates).

If a tone tag is ambiguous, consider writing out the entire word, or describing your tone rather than using shorthand.

When flouting the maxim of manner by making a sentence that is ambiguous on purpose, you kind of can't use tone tags. But be ready for people to interpret what you said in a lot of different ways.

Final Remarks

Tone tags aren't your only tool for clear communication. You could always consider rephrasing a sentence to make the connection between things clearer (for example, "there's bread and jam in the fridge" -> "there's bread and jam in the fridge, do you want some?") or writing another sentence to clarify your tone.

If you're communicating with the goal that other people understand you, you need to use the tools that they can understand. Tone tags can be helpful for some people, but they might actually make things worse for others. The most important thing is to accept that no matter how clear you make yourself, some people will misunderstand you anyway. You can always clarify things after the fact, and laugh about it later.

[sadbookworm]

I break Grice's maxim of quantity frequently to my audience's mild confusion at my "very thorough explanations."

[catboydan]

my very specific prediction for the upcoming AITA video: he'll open by explaining that last week on the gaming channel he had an 'AITA' moment himself [insert clips from the dan eye incident here]

then he'll lead into the vid by saying something like "and that inspired me to ask you all for your 'am I the hole' moments", and only then will he bring up that this time, he asked for specifically dating/love-related stories, leaving us to piece together that the intro is a dating/love related story via the maxim of relevance

[srebrnastal]

I know I am right.

[sphxxshthealien]

not that anyone asked but my linguistics hot take is that tautological redundancy is not a mistake that must be corrected, but is a useful tool in communication. To intentionally flout the maxim of quantity is to intentionally convey a different meaning, so phrases such as “global pandemic” may seem redundant (all pandemics are global), but they are useful because they bring emphasis towards the “global” part; you now know that i’m referring to an international impact rather than the pathogen itself. (It’s over-exaggerated, if you will.) It can also be used for clarification: earlier I said “intentionally flout” despite how “flouting” in the context of Grice’s maxims usually implies intentionality, but specifying this avoids assuming that the reader knows it, so the statement is more clear. I also said “tautological redundancy” in the first sentence because I thought it would be funny

and yes, this all comes from a grudge i still hold against my teacher from when i was eleven years old who marked me down for writing “fatal death” even though i was clearly using it as a comedic hyperbole

[culiehua]

How many languages do you know? :) And please tell us about the ancient Europe latin lore

Hi!! So, uh, it depends. Fluently? 5. If we also consider those somewhere on the A1-A2 level? Then 7 (I'm learning them but like passively so it's so-so).

The lore, yes. (Mentioned here)

So, let's establish the setting: It's the late 1800s. My great-grandma, a tiny woman born during the Qing Dynasty with bound feet, taught by the same teacher as that other guy Puyi, the last emperor, first born to a very famous doctor and one of the RICH richest people in that area owning anything from pharmacies to harbors (also language pros for trade) to entire streets (nepotism marrying nepotism) was raised to get married to my great grandfather (also nepotism) young obv. They have children. The hubby dies young. She moves back home. It is the height of patriarchy but all her brothers are either failures or don't want to study. The famous doctor has no heir and all his work will be gone. Great-grandma is very smart tho and her dad says fuck it: she manages to inherit his legacy, becoming a great doctor of Chinese medicine. She then goes on to study Western medicine (English and Latin VERY needed babes) and picks gynecology as her focus. This ends up saving her life. What a feminist icon.

I think her dad was probably the same age as Jem. She died when I was in elementary iirc. I think about her often.

[coquelicoq]

i have been really tempted to number my siblings lately so it's easier to refer to them in conversation, but i keep running into the two-family problem. namely, i have four siblings, but there are two on each side of the family, so each of my siblings only has two siblings. so from my perspective it would go sister1 (me), sister2 (mom's side), sister3 (mom's side), brother4 (dad's side), sister5 (dad's side). and this numbering would work fine for sisters 2 and 3. but what about brother4 and sister5? they would think of themselves as brother2 and sister3. and then there'd be two sister3s. chaos.

[stephen9260]

True love is finding someone to violate the gricean maxim of quantity with

[anguilliforme]

Theoretical semiotics is a fantastic start but we need more insane linguistic subfields that are seen as viable career paths in the star trek universe

[darkdoombob]

Drop me the non sequitur of the century

I'm sorry, but I think you may be confusing me for someone else. I always uphold Grice's four maxims of conversation, one of which is the maxim of relations. This ensures that all of my communication is clear and concise. To introduce non-sequiturs into the conversation would be to introduce irrelevancies, breaking down the carefully moderated flow of information that I strive to maintain.

[rhinestonebabe]

The hoes hate it when I'm ambiguous and obscure

[empyrealix]

⊹ ࣪˖ MY LOVE, MY LIFE | #CS55

pairing. carlos sainz x linguist!reader

synopsis. in which everyone thinks you and carlos should get married

warnings. none; linguistics rambles

note. i rambled a bit about linguistics in this one, i'm sorry

MASTERLIST ; requests open

yn

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yn Happy birthday to the man, the myth, the legend Paul Grice, whose pioneering work (alongside J. L. Austin) is the reason pragmatics exists as its own subfield in linguistics. Central to Grice is the cooperative principle, conversational implicature, and his maxims (of which there are four: maxim of quality; maxim of quantity; maxim of manner; maxim of relation/relevance). Grice thought that speakers may communicate either by breaking the maxims or by obeying them, when a maxim appears to be violated, a pragmatic inference is created. This is only possible if the speaker is believed to be cooperative. An important point is that speakers—as long as they are cooperative—are generally guided by these maxims.

Happy anniversary to me and Carlos too, I guess.

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alex_albon please wish him a proper happy anniversary, he’s been whining for ten minutes

yn Sorry, but Grice > Carlos

charles_leclerc yn, please. he cornered me in the paddock, and now i’m late for a strategy meeting 🥹

scuderiaferrari Get to the meeting right now, Charles. -Fred

user1 yn is so real for that

carlossainz55 happy anniversary, mi amor <3 i love you, and i cannot wait for our dinner later today

yn I love you more, Carlito <33 I’m so excited to see you later and to celebrate our anniversary

carlossainz55 i love you the most, actually

user2 PLEASE JUST GET MARRIED ALREADY

user3 okay, so yncarlos marriage when?

user4 second this

user5 fourth this

user6 MOTHER

carlossainz55

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carlossainz55 she brought me here only to spend the entire time talking about accents

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lando there was a race?

carlossainz55 and? she’s more important

charles_leclerc you’re so whipped

alex_albon you’re so whipped

user7 GET MARRIED PLEASE

georgerussell63 photo credit: georgerussell63

user8 guys, what if they’re already married?

user9 that’s delusional

user10 there’s no way charles would be able to keep it secret if that was the case

charles_leclerc I CAN KEEP A SECRET

lando no, you can’t

alex_albon no, you can’t

georgerussell63 no, you can’t

yn No, you can’t

carlossainz55 no, you can’t

charles_leclerc you’re all so MEAN to me

yn You loved it

carlossainz55 i love you

yn

liked by charles_leclerc, carlossainz55 and 643 others

yn Since it’s race weekend here in Australia, it is only right that some facts are shared about the variety of English which is spoken here, Australian English (AusE, for short). English came to Australia through convicts being transported from Britain. It eventually became a killer language, which means that it replaced the aboriginal languages which already existed in Australia—and had existed in Australia long before English made its entrance. Unlike other varieties of English (like British English and American English) there is little regional variation in AusE, but there is social variation. When talking about AusE, it is possible to differentiate between three main varieties: broad AusE, general AusE, and cultivated AusE. Some noticeable features of this variety is that it has two productive noun suffixes: -ie and -o; she may be used as a generic pronoun; and it has highly characteristic vocabulary. Regarding phonetics, AusE is non-rhotic, which means that /r/ is only pronounced in front of vowels. Another notable feature of AusE phonology is that it has HRTs (this is sometimes referred to as Australian Questioning Intonation). HRT is short for high rise terminals; this means that declarative sentences often end with a rising pitch.

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user11 my favourite part about the races is yn’s linguistic rambles

user12 my favourite part of her instagram is her linguistic rambles

user13 when’s the wedding?

user14 stop asking them about when they’re getting married. it’s getting weird

charles_leclerc thank you, this was very informative

user15 i imagine carlos asking a million questions and getting increasingly confused

carlossainz55 i understood all of this actually

yn You got distracted and asked if we could get ice cream in the middle of my explanation of killer languages.

carlossainz55 i still enjoy listening to you, even though most of it goes over my head

user16 ditch carlos, yn, i’ll listen to your explanations of killer languages

carlossainz55 don’t flirt with my wife??

user17 WIFE? WIFE? MR SAINZ?

carlossainz55

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carlossainz55 summer break spent in spain with the love of my life. i’m ready to get back to racing and scoring points

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williamsracing We’re excited to see you back in the garage carlossainz55

carlossainz55 i'm excited to be back!

user18 MR SAINZ, YOU HAVE TO EXPLAIN THE WIFE COMMENT

user19 what wife comment??

user20 on one of yn’s posts carlos referred to yn as his wife

user19 i log off for one day and suddenly carlos has a whole WIFE??

user20 we don’t know for sure, yet

yn Carlos <333 please come back to bed :(

carlossainz55 i’ll be right there, mi vida

yn

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yn So sad I couldn’t be at the race this weekend, but duty called. I wish Carlos, Alex and Williams the best luck this weekend!

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williamsracing Thank you, yn. We’re so sad you couldn’t be here this weekend, but we’ll see you at the next race?

yn Absolutely!

lando god, just get married already

carlossainz55 we did??

yn CARLOS

user21 did anyone else see carlos’ comment or am i going insane?

user9 what if user8 was right?

user8 I TOLD YOU BUT YOU ALL THOUGHT I WAS DELUSIONAL

carlossainz55

liked by yn, georgerussell63 and 943,124 others

carlossainz55 three months ago, i married the love of my life in a small courthouse in a coastal town in spain

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yn And I got to marry the love of my life. Here’s to many more years with you

carlossainz55 to the rest of our lives

user8 WHAT DID I TELL YOU, BUT NO, I WAS DELUSIONAL

georgerussell63 congratulations, you two!

charles_leclerc I KNEW IT

user22 THEY’VE BEEN MARRIED SINCE THE SUMMER BREAK? I’M SICK

williamsracing Congratulations on your wedding! We’re so happy for you!

user23 A YNCARLOS MARRIAGE?? FINALLY!!

user24 OUR PRAYERS HAVE BEEN ANSWERED

lando i feel betrayed, you were married for three months and didn’t tell me?? we are no longer friends

yn

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yn Does the language people speak influence the way they think? If you ask Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, that is true. Though neither Sapir or Whorf coined the term “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis” they have come to be associated with it. The central idea of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is that the languages a person speaks determines the way people perceive and think about the world. There are three version of this hypothesis: the strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which claims that the only conceptual distinctions people can make are those encoded in language because language imposes these distinctions on sense data; the restricted Sapir-Whorf hypothesis claims that some topics are such that the only conceptual distinctions are those encoded in language. This is because language imposes these distinctions on relevant sense data. The last version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is the watered-down Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. This version claims that there are some topics that are influenced by language, specifically this happens for things that are habitually or stereotypically thought about, an example of this is grammatical gender. The strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is false; the restricted Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is unproven; the watered-down one is the only one which may be true. The answer to my question, then, suggests that languages influences the way people think in respect to scarcely perceptible cognitive biases and subtle stereotypes.

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user25 GIRL, you just got married to THE carlos sainz and you’re talking about linguistics

yn Linguistics is the love of my life

carlossainz55 i cannot wait to spend the rest of my life listening to you talking about linguistics

yn Forever <3

lando oh no, they’re more insufferable now than they were before

carlossainz55 this is your fault

yn I second that

user26 yn really said the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is more important than her husband

user27 an icon

[defectivegembrain]

Having a significant gap in formal education but being really into an academic subject from a young age is so weird when you get to study that subject at an advanced level today my Pragmatics lecturer was like if you did English language or something in school you probably learned about Grice's maxims but the same is not true for this week's topic, evidentiality and I'm sitting there thinking I didn't learn about Grice in school I just read stuff on my own. Then he was like so does anyone know what evidentiality is and I answered correctly. I learned it from the lingthusiasm podcast. I'm looking forward to doing prototype theory in English Historical Semantics I read about it in a huge English linguistics book I emotionally imprinted on as a teenager and filled with many bits of paper marking the parts I found especially interesting. Meanwhile at school I was learning to tell the time and brush my hair.

[drdemonprince]

your post about only communicating the minimum needed reminded me of the gricean maxims (concept in linguistics describing how people communicate)! your advice was very similar to the maxim of quantity :)

From the UPenn School of Arts & Sciences site:

Grice's Maxims

The maxim of quantity, where one tries to be as informative as one possibly can, and gives as much information as is needed, and no more.

The maxim of quality, where one tries to be truthful, and does not give information that is false or that is not supported by evidence.

The maxim of relation, where one tries to be relevant, and says things that are pertinent to the discussion.

The maxim of manner, when one tries to be as clear, as brief, and as orderly as one can in what one says, and where one avoids obscurity and ambiguity.

[silly-cherries]

FAERIE LINGUISTICS GUYS

FAERIE LINGUISTICS!!!!! (Hello writer moots 😳)

So a backbone of pragmatics (the linguistic field of studying language meaning in context) is 4 rules, called Grice's Maxims.

1. Quality: provide information that's true or that you believe to be true.

2. Quantity: Provide enough, but not too much, information.

3. Relation: be relevant.

4. Manner: be orderly, be clear. No ambiguity or obscurity.

Humans are able to violate any of the maxims, but we assume they don't in order to clearly and effectively communicate. And usually people don't violate them on purpose. So usually human trickery is lies. Faeries on the other hand, CANT LIE. they can't violate the maxim of quality. That means if they want to conceal information they rely entirely on violation of quantity, manner, and relation, which is how faeries can lie without saying anything false. People assume these maxims when they aren't true!!

Makes me wonder about faerie pragmatics... Do faeries assume these maxims? If they don't, it makes sense why faeries can trick humans so easily but not other fae.

Also why do we always assume in our writing that fae speak human language lmao

[crwbannwen]

I always wondered why I’m so hyperfixated on Grice’s maxims… and then I realised it’s because it’s an insight into neurotypical conversation.

Grice’s maxims are meant to be followed if you’re being cooperative.

There are 4 maxims

Quality (you say statements with certainty that matches the evidence)

Quantity (You say no more or less than you need to)

Relevance (Your communication is relevant to prior communication)

Manner (communication is as unambiguous and clear as possible)

But people break these all the time.

Person A: Did you feed the tarantula last night?

Person B: I only got back this morning.

Breaks relevance. Implies the answer is ‘No’ but might not be: ‘I only got back this morning, but I fed him before I left last night’ also makes sense as a reply.

Person B: She has a tarantula!

Person A: And you’ve met him?

Person B: No, she told me about him.

Breaks quality, person A assumes person B’s confidence is from experience not word of mouth.

Person B: What species of tarantula is that?

Person A: One from South America.

Breaks quantity (not enough information to answer the question). Implies that Person A is observing Quality and doesn’t know, but not necessarily since ‘One from South America, but can you figure out which?’ Could work as a reply too. Especially in an educational environment.

Person A: There was a locust for every tarantula.

Person B: One locust each or one locust shared between them?

Breaks manner. Sentence is ambiguous. Implies that the English language is confusing.