The Linguistic Rules of Life

(which you hopefully already follow)

You’re at a party sipping on a cocktail and chatting with a new acquaintance when suddenly, it hits you: you’ve barely said a word.

Your eyes glaze over while your conversation partner drones on about their incompetent landlord, a burrito they ate last week, and dates that were so boring that they were forced to talk for the entirety of the evening. (No surprise there.)

This speaker believes themselves to be the entertaining savior of this otherwise-silent exchange: but are they really? (No, they’re just self-absorbed and never learned how to ask people questions.)

At face value, an exchange like this could tentatively qualify as successful communication. Two individuals share a common code, and one is transmitting information, while the other is receiving it. Right?

But your gut might tell you that there is something a little off about an exchange like this. Is this person just rude, or is there some other linguistic malfunction taking place?

How We Talk (& How We Behave)

At the heart of all successful communication, aside from the necessary shared code, is two cooperative communicators. (Even if you added a “language barrier” to the equation, you could still accomplish a surprising amount of communication with some hand symbols and persistence.)

One of the goals of pragmatics, the subdiscipline of linguistics that addresses language use, is to explain exactly what makes communication successful.

Over the last few decades, scholars have come up with a few key “rules” that all communicators follow. One of the most popular sets of “rules” come from Paul Grice, who proposed four basic principles that are required for successful communication.

These principles, also known as the Gricean Maxims, make up the “cooperative principle,” which describes how listeners and speakers interact cooperatively in conversation.

Grice’s four maxims are NOT rules that we need to consciously choose to follow. Rather, they’re a description of the principles that rational people naturally adhere to in order to communicate successfully.

#1 - Be Informative (Maxim of Quantity)

The maxim of quantity is simple: don’t say too much, and don’t say too little.

Let’s say you’re asking someone on the street for directions to the post office:

A: “Excuse me, could you point me to the nearest post office?”

Someone violating this principle might give a long-winded answer:

B: “Well, that’s a bit tricky, because there are a few post offices that serve the area. If you’re willing to travel a bit farther to get better service, then you should go a few avenues over. The workers are a little rude at the post office that’s close by. But actually, if you just need to drop a letter, you don’t even need to go to the post office at all. There’s a mailbox just down the street and another one just in front of the subway station…”

Too little information would also be deemed a violation:

B: “It’s on this street.”

#2 - Be Truthful (Maxim of Quality)

As conversationalists, we make one base assumption all the time: that the person we’re talking to is telling us the truth. Beyond the ethical implications of it all, it’s exhausting to communicate with someone when you’re constantly questioning their reliability.

Making a statement you lack good evidence for would be considered a violation of this maxim. This explains (in part) why people tend to distrust politicians. They seem to make and break promises willy-nilly, and declare blatant half-truths with the intent of just riling people up. It’s hard to take what they say seriously.

#3 - Be Relevant (Maxim of Relation)

Some linguists argue that the maxim of relation is the most important maxim of them all. Two linguists in particular, Dan Sperber and Deidre Wilson, based their interpretive framework called “relevance theory” off of this maxim.

Relevance theory is a way of explaining how we interpret utterances in conversation, and can basically be summed up as the following: we assume that what we’re being told is relevant to us.

It sounds basic, but it helps us from falling into an endless spiral of analysis, and saves us a lot of mental processing power.

For example, if a friend told me, “I saw Chris walking down Third Avenue today,” I would immediately assume that she is referring to the Chris that both of us know (say, Chris Smith, who we went to college with).

This most “relevant” option helps me interpret the utterance accurately, and prevents me from going through every Chris I can think of — Chris Evans, Chris Rock, Chris Pine, Chris Brown, Chris Christie — until I land on the one that my friend was thinking of.

#4 - Be Clear (Maxim of Manner)

The maxim of manner states that you must deliver information as clearly as possible. Someone violating this maxim might:

• Sprinkle in obscure imagery or word choice.

• Use language that is ambiguous without clarifying how it should be interpreted.

• Say things in a strange or illogical order.

This is probably the main maxim that is violated during Michael Scott’s iconic monologue from The Office:

“David, here it is. My philosophy is basically this. And this is something that I live by. And I always have. And I always will. Don't ever, for any reason, do anything to anyone, for any reason, ever, no matter what. No matter... where. Or who, or who you are with, or, or where you are going, or... or where you've been... ever. For any reason, whatsoever.”

Violating & Flouting Maxims

So, back to our friend at the party. On one hand, their endless blather seems to be a little rude. You could also argue that it’s somewhat violating a few of the maxims — quantity, relevance.

But let’s spin this around a bit. Maybe — shocker — this person is finding YOU a little unpleasant, and is now breaking a few maxims on purpose just to get you off their back.

An intentional violation like this would be considered flouting the maxim. And what happens when you flout a maxim? You’re hoping to generate an implicature — the meaning behind the face-value meaning of the utterance.

Let’s go back to the post office example. Someone who responds to your inquiry with a brief “it’s on this street” is certainly violating the maxim of quantity. But they could be flouting it on purpose.

With a dismissive “it’s on this street,” and perhaps a wave of the hand, this person is really just saying that they don’t have the patience to entertain your question. The implicature would be something like, “I don’t have time to deal with you, ask someone else.” Best move on to a more cooperative conversationalist!

Thanks for reading!

Pragmatics isn’t just about language — it’s really all about human behavior. Next time you clock a communication breakdown, try a little Gricean analysis to figure out what’s going on (and perhaps what is trying to be communicated beneath the surface).

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next week!