147. Grice's Maxims of Conversation | THUNK

How exactly does implication work? Philosopher Paul Grice might have had a couple decent ideas.

-Links for the Curious-

[robertreal]

Grice's works are some of the most profound I've come across.

[brookelomb]

I have a 9 y/o autistic child and a 6 y/o who struggles with pragmatics. Thanks for this content. Very helpful!

On a totally unrelated note: Love the host’s hair!

[alexixeno]

Me and my friends have the amazing ability to break tye rule of relevance. In a sense we can carry on 3 or so conversations at once sifting back and forth between them naturally

[Fiddling_while_Rome_burns]

The Cooperative Principle doesn't seem that different from Wittgenstein's Language Games.

How many analytical philosophers does it take to change a light bulb?













None, when it stops giving out light it's no-longer a 'light' bulb.

[vincetafea]

When there is one slice of pizza between me and my siblings, I flout the maxim of cooperation by immediately replying "sure" when asked "do you want the last slice?"

On face value, the utterance is a simple proposition. "Does A want B?" However, the implicature of this questions seems instead to be saying "To what extent do you want this last slice? Based on that extent i may be more or less inclined to cooperatively grant you that slice. Please return the courtesy by reciprocating a similar utterance so we may agree upon who gets the last slice."

Ofcourse, in turn my siblings may flout by saying "that's unfortunate" and grab the last slice for themselves. Here the implicature either changed to suit the situation of me being uncooperative or i misinterpretted their utterance for courtesy.

[bookfan]

Hey I’m actually early for once! You usually upload while I’m sleeping lol.

Also, “ENGAGING SCOLDING PROTOCOL” made me laugh a lot more than I probably should have.

Edit: I forgot to say, my favorite way to flout the principle is sarcasm. Lots of sarcasm.

[brians]

This is just pointing out what we do automatically. I prefer learning about empathy and improving conversation through listening and how we and others respond.

[Nightcoffee]

I tend toward manner violations that invoke dissonance; specifically I love putting on a sweet, joyful tone and say the most grimdark things I can muster.

[joshuaburke]

I realised at 7:23 that you said "weagel" and someone put over an "s" sound where the g would've been hahahahah, I think more people need to edit like this

[Infantry]

I also feel like I've taken linguistics for granted. That's why I've started trying to learn other languages. It's both surprising and not too surprising to see where languages differ and where they're the same. More so on the similarities: like, the English word for 'house' or 'home' is 'maison' in French (not far removed from 'mansion') and 'дом' in Russian (pronounced like 'dome', not far removed from 'domicile').
Anyway, I love the intentional subversion of linguistic rules, and I think I like subversions of manner more than anything. Basically half of the things said by the McElroy brothers, if you're familiar with them. Something about speaking in a posh accent while taking about 'delicious stink meat' (hotdogs) really gets me laughing.

[CSDragon]

Autistic or ADHD people like myself basically never got taught any of this. Especially Quantity and Relevance

[MCFalkenstein]

I think dankmemes are (or at least can be) a very funny way to do this.

[String.Epsilon]

There is one thing not covered by these maxims. Although I'm cheating a bit. But unless I miss something, simply abandoning conversation is not covered by these maxims but that line of action can have GREAT implications.

And I'd argue that the abrupt ending of a conversation is still part of it. But I'm of course no linguist (nor academic of any kind for that matter) and just like poking holes at "rules" until I find a bug.

[hundertzwoelf]

Not on topic, but I think the title should say Episode 147 instead of 146

[CK_limbo]

Hai josh I’m Mitchell bills son? Remember geek pride day?