WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 1 00:00:00.220 --> 00:00:03.690 “Vegan burgers” are a sensible thing to find on a supermarket shelf. 2 00:00:03.690 --> 00:00:05.959 But “vegan tomatoes” wouldn’t be. 3 00:00:05.959 --> 00:00:08.360 In fact, those tomatoes would sound a bit suspicious: 4 00:00:08.390 --> 00:00:11.880 it’s the same as the old joke about asbestos-free cereal. 5 00:00:11.880 --> 00:00:14.930 Those labels are ignoring one of Grice’s Maxims, 6 00:00:14.930 --> 00:00:18.880 a set of… guidelines that explain how we communicate with each other. 7 00:00:18.880 --> 00:00:20.740 Paul Grice was a philosopher of language, 8 00:00:20.740 --> 00:00:24.050 and in '75 he published a paper called "Logic and Conversation". 9 00:00:24.050 --> 00:00:29.499 He was dealing with the gap between natural language and what’s called “logical formalism”. 10 00:00:29.499 --> 00:00:34.260 Basically, we communicate far more than just the literal meaning of our words. 11 00:00:34.260 --> 00:00:39.840 Grice wrote that for that to be possible without having some hyper-logical unambiguous language, 12 00:00:39.840 --> 00:00:42.320 we must be operating under some shared assumptions, 13 00:00:42.320 --> 00:00:45.100 what he called the Cooperative Principle. 14 00:00:45.100 --> 00:00:49.320 We assume that we are cooperating with each other when we are talking. 15 00:00:49.320 --> 00:00:50.940 Which is obvious, right? 16 00:00:50.940 --> 00:00:52.420 But there's a deeper point there: 17 00:00:52.420 --> 00:00:55.120 we all try to fit what other people say 18 00:00:55.120 --> 00:00:58.810 into the context of what’s happening or what’s already been said. 19 00:00:58.810 --> 00:00:59.810 That's part of why, 20 00:00:59.810 --> 00:01:03.320 when we play a computer game and a character says exactly the same thing 21 00:01:03.320 --> 00:01:07.150 no matter if we’ve just saved their village or burned down their house, 22 00:01:07.150 --> 00:01:09.510 we can tell that they're preprogrammed. 23 00:01:09.510 --> 00:01:12.580 We can't find a way to fit their words to the situation. 24 00:01:12.580 --> 00:01:15.909 So here are Grice’s Maxims, and if you’re not in a video game, 25 00:01:15.909 --> 00:01:19.900 these are the rules that we assume our conversation partners are following. 26 00:01:19.900 --> 00:01:21.680 Although, despite how they’re written, 27 00:01:21.680 --> 00:01:27.800 they are not prescriptive, you-must-do-this rules: they’re just guidelines. 28 00:01:27.820 --> 00:01:33.560 So first: the Maxim of Quantity: give as much information as required, and no more. 29 00:01:33.560 --> 00:01:35.510 Which is what we're talking about with vegan tomatoes. 30 00:01:35.510 --> 00:01:38.340 We already know they’re vegan from the word “tomato”, 31 00:01:38.340 --> 00:01:41.340 giving too much information is strange. 32 00:01:41.340 --> 00:01:45.409 Next, the Maxim of Quality: tell the truth. 33 00:01:45.409 --> 00:01:48.520 Next, there’s the Maxim of Relation: be relevant. 34 00:01:48.520 --> 00:01:50.980 The person you’re talking to will assume that what you’re saying 35 00:01:50.980 --> 00:01:54.140 is related to what they just said in some way, 36 00:01:54.140 --> 00:01:56.900 and they’ll try to find what that connection is. 37 00:01:56.900 --> 00:01:59.090 And finally, the Maxim of Manner: 38 00:01:59.090 --> 00:02:01.340 be clear in what you’re saying. 39 00:02:01.340 --> 00:02:05.420 Although Grice phrased that in a way that I don’t think actually follows his own guidelines? 40 00:02:05.420 --> 00:02:09.880 Actually, all of these maxims were stated and restated at length. 41 00:02:09.880 --> 00:02:12.430 But then, he was a philosopher. They tend to do that. 42 00:02:12.430 --> 00:02:15.040 So let’s have a good example of using Grice’s Maxims, 43 00:02:15.040 --> 00:02:17.660 and after that, a deliberately bad one. 44 00:02:17.660 --> 00:02:20.410 Let’s imagine someone says, “I’m out of petrol”, 45 00:02:20.410 --> 00:02:24.180 and in reply, I say, “there’s a garage down the road”. 46 00:02:24.180 --> 00:02:28.920 Without context, just using the super-literal, logical meaning of those sentences, 47 00:02:28.920 --> 00:02:31.010 there’s no connection there. 48 00:02:31.010 --> 00:02:32.880 Those are just two factual statements. 49 00:02:32.880 --> 00:02:36.319 But if you assume I’m trying to follow the Cooperative Principle, 50 00:02:36.319 --> 00:02:40.200 then you can automatically work out a lot more. 51 00:02:40.200 --> 00:02:45.030 Using the Maxim of Relation, the garage probably has petrol. 52 00:02:45.030 --> 00:02:50.100 Using the Maxim of Quantity, we know that that's all I need to say in order to imply: 53 00:02:50.100 --> 00:02:52.620 hey, you can push your car there, you can buy fuel, 54 00:02:52.620 --> 00:02:54.590 and you can solve your whole "being stranded" problem. 55 00:02:54.590 --> 00:02:55.980 A problem which, by the way, 56 00:02:55.980 --> 00:02:59.459 was also completely implied using the Cooperative Principle. 57 00:02:59.459 --> 00:03:02.310 We can bring the graphics in now, but until this moment, 58 00:03:02.310 --> 00:03:09.080 all that backstory about a stranded car was implied just by the words “I’m out of petrol”. 59 00:03:09.090 --> 00:03:11.400 Now, using the Maxim of Quality, we can assume I’m telling the truth 60 00:03:11.400 --> 00:03:13.950 and this isn't a lie or a guess. 61 00:03:13.950 --> 00:03:18.489 And using the Maxim of Manner, even someone who’s confused by my dialect 62 00:03:18.489 --> 00:03:21.760 can work out that "garage" probably means the British slang 63 00:03:21.760 --> 00:03:24.280 for what Americans would call a “gas station”. 64 00:03:24.280 --> 00:03:28.110 It’s not just someone’s garage at home where they park their car. 65 00:03:28.110 --> 00:03:29.570 That would be weird. 66 00:03:29.570 --> 00:03:34.310 All that got implied from just the phrase “there’s a garage down the road”. 67 00:03:34.310 --> 00:03:37.120 But what about when we don't follow the Maxims? 68 00:03:37.120 --> 00:03:42.819 Grice says that in that case, we’re asking for Conversational Implicature. 69 00:03:42.819 --> 00:03:47.140 Which is to say, we are implying something not said. 70 00:03:47.140 --> 00:03:51.650 There are two ways to break a maxim: you can “violate” it or you can “flout” it. 71 00:03:51.650 --> 00:03:53.640 Violating it is just, like, lying. 72 00:03:53.640 --> 00:03:55.490 It’s breaking a maxim to deceive. 73 00:03:55.490 --> 00:03:57.920 But “flouting” is breaking a maxim in a way 74 00:03:57.920 --> 00:04:01.080 that you expect the other person to pick up on. 75 00:04:01.080 --> 00:04:04.250 One of Grice’s examples is a philosophy professor who has to write 76 00:04:04.250 --> 00:04:08.200 a grad school letter of recommendation for a student that they have no faith in. 77 00:04:08.200 --> 00:04:10.700 And, yes, I absolutely believe 78 00:04:10.700 --> 00:04:13.650 that this is just Grice quietly grumbling about one of his students. 79 00:04:13.650 --> 00:04:17.370 Anyway, the professor writes the letter using the Cooperative Principle. 80 00:04:17.370 --> 00:04:20.620 "The student’s command of English is excellent, 81 00:04:20.620 --> 00:04:24.480 "and his attendance at tutorials has been regular.” 82 00:04:25.970 --> 00:04:28.040 That is, technically, a letter of recommendation, 83 00:04:28.050 --> 00:04:30.310 but it doesn’t follow the Maxim of Quantity. 84 00:04:30.310 --> 00:04:31.979 It is far too little information. 85 00:04:31.979 --> 00:04:35.070 It doesn’t say the student’s actually good at philosophy. 86 00:04:35.070 --> 00:04:37.610 It’s flouting the maxim, and when someone does that, 87 00:04:37.610 --> 00:04:41.280 they are hoping that the person reading or listening will understand 88 00:04:41.280 --> 00:04:43.880 what they’re really trying to communicate. 89 00:04:43.880 --> 00:04:47.800 And that’s why you see product packaging that says “vegan tomato” 90 00:04:47.800 --> 00:04:49.930 or “asbestos-free cereal”, 91 00:04:49.930 --> 00:04:52.970 or, more realistically, “low in fat” or “low in sugar”. 92 00:04:52.970 --> 00:04:57.230 They’re flouting Grice’s maxims to imply that the other brands aren’t, 93 00:04:57.230 --> 00:05:00.120 or to imply that those claims are good things to be. 94 00:05:00.120 --> 00:05:01.880 And that might not be true. 95 00:05:01.880 --> 00:05:03.940 But it’s not technically lying. 96 00:05:03.940 --> 00:05:07.060 It’s just not playing fair by the Cooperative Principle. 97 00:05:07.060 --> 00:05:10.060 Either that, or there really is some sort of evil, 98 00:05:10.060 --> 00:05:11.840 animal-byproduct tomato out there. 99 00:05:11.840 --> 00:05:14.470 Thanks to my co-authors Molly Ruhl and Gretchen McCulloch. 100 00:05:14.470 --> 00:05:18.360 Gretchen’s podcast Lingthusiasm is linked in the description, it is well worth a listen.