In H.P. Grice established several principles meant to analyse forms of discourse and the main factors governing its Cooperative Principle to analyse discourse.
Some three decades ago, H. P. Grice proposed the Cooperative Principle for the analysis of discourse in order to "find the conditions governing conversation": "We might formulate a
2. Cooperation as a Concept in Communication
Grice starts his discussion with the expression of the Addresser and ends with the participation of the Addressee,to show that the Cooperative Principle (hereafter CP) operates on both sides of the communicativecontinuum. To him, the term "cooperation" means two things: the Addresser's conscious effort to be cooperative,and, the Addressee's assumption of that effort in operation. As most communication scholars do, he first concerns himself with the talk behavior of the Addresser: "Make your conversational contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged" (Grice, 1975: 45, my emphasis). He then specifies the Principle in terms of maxims,namely,the maxim of quality,of quantity, of relevance,and of manner. He asserts that these maxims create the conditions that guide conversation along the right course, though strict observation of them may create a dull case of talk. However,as Levinson points out, no one actually follows this principle the whole time (Levinson 1983). Grice himself also acknowledges that the participants in a talk exchange may quietly and unostentatiously "violate, opt out, be faced by a clash, or flout a maxim or maxims" (Grice 1975: 49). This clash of idealistic cooperation against how the cooperation is actually implemented poses comprehension problems for the Addressee: How can the Addressee be sure that the Addresser is making that kind of attempt in a given situation? Take the familiar example of asking for directions:
A: Excuse me, but where is the gas station?
B: (1) First, keep straight ahead and you will see one around the corner.
(2) Check to see that the road is not a dead end.
(3) See if there is an attendant.
According to the maxim of relevance,speaker B should be relevant by givingan answer directly oriented towards A's inquiry. Answer (1) is indeed a directrelevantresponse. But how can A decide that B is trying to be cooperative when provided with additional, indirect answers like (2) and (3)?
If cooperation does not lie with the Addresser's effort, the burden of being cooperativeshould be shifted,as a logical consequence, onto the Addressee. Then, cooperation can mean that the Addressee is trying to interpret the linguistic activities of the other in a cooperative way. That is, the Addressee is to assume that the CP is being adhered to at some deeper level, if the talk does not proceed according to their specifications. So in the case of the above example, A is expected to interpret B's second and third replies by assuming that B has no idea of where the gas station is, but tries to be cooperative by offering an alternative way out of a potential misjudgment. In fact, this is exactly the conclusion Grice intends us to draw from his maxims: Deviated responses create conversational implicatures. "Since the truth of a conversationalimplictumis not required by the truth of what is said, the implicature is not carried by what is said, but only by the saying of what is said, or by 'putting it the right way'" (Grice 1975:58).
To boil it down to the last analysis, Grice is suggesting that the CP is a guideline governing both expression of the Addresser and the perception the Addressee. Yet,in the next section,I am going to show some cases which are perceived cooperative by the Chinese, but which may be taken as examples of violating or flouting cooperation by anyone socialized in the American culture.
3. Maxims and Perceptual Problems from an American Point of View
In his lecture series entitled "Logic and Conversation", Grice proposes that the efficient cooperative use of language generally requires that people follow the CP which can be further specified into four basic maxims (Grice 1975: 45-47):
1. The Maxim of Quality:
Try to make your contribution one that either you believe or have evidence to show that it is true.
2. The Maxim of Quantity:
Make your contribution as informative as is required; no more or no less for the current purpose of the exchange.
3. The Maxim of Relation:
Be relevant to the topic of the current exchanges.
4. The Maxim of Manner:
Be clear in your intention and concise in expression
A conspicuous feature of the four maxims is that the request in each maxim is expressed not in absolute, but in relative terms. They are flexible, depending on how the participants interpret them. The following are some Chinese examples which, from the American point of view, hardly observe the given four maxims.
3.1. A Problem with the Maxim of Quality
Two Chinese speakers converse:
A: Let me introduce you. This is Mr. Chen, general manager of the...
B: I've heard so many good things about you. And I've been longing for a chance to meet you ....
Here, B may never have heard of Mr. Chen. Yet,the use of exaggeration is a normal rhetorical way to make a friendly start. However,if this strategy is applied in an intercultural communication situation where the listener comes from a "truth respecting" culture, this seems to be a case of a direct violation of the maxim. One may at least wonder about the motivebehind such a remark. And yet, in the Chinese culture, it sounds most natural, especially in the business and professional circles.
Ma (1993) gives an interesting example of how the Chinese "break down" the maxim of quality. To communicate the request "Turn on the air conditioner for me, please", one can say:
(1) It's better in this room than outside the building.
(2) It's OK, don't turn the air conditioner on.
In the first case, the statement suggests, "It's still hot in here, though it's cooler than outside. You should know that turning on the air conditioner will make me feel more comfortable". The second statement implies, "I say no, but you should know I really mean yes". This rhetoric of indirect discourse that is "contrary-to-face-value" in Chinese verbal language behaviorcan surely be confusing to people of other cultures that do not have such practices, especially those like the USA where the expectation is for direct discourse: "Turn on the air conditioner for me, please".
3.2. A Problem with the Maxim of Quantity
Here is a Chinese recipe for preparing an omelet.
MAKING AN OMELET:
Main Ingredients: cooking oil, salt, gourmet powder, spring onion and ginger granules, prickly ash solution.
Step 1: Break egg(s) into a bowl, mix in oil, salt, gourmet powder, spring onion and ginger granules, Chinese prickly ash solution.
Step 2: Heat oil in a pan. Pour the egg mixture in. Turn the pan till the liquid becomes a solid round. Pour in more oil. Cook for a few minutes until it turns brown. Turn over and do the same to other side. Take the omelet out and place into a dish ready to serve.2
Comparing it to an English (UK) recipe, we may get an idea of how different the two recipes can be by way of presentation.
BREAKFAST OMELET:
1 tablespoon cooking oil
2 rashers lean bacon, chopped
1 slice bread, crusts removed, cut into cubes
4 eggs
4 tablespoons water
salt and pepper
Heat oil in a 15cm-18cm (6"-7") omeletpan. Add bacon, cook for a few minutes. Add bread cubes, cook until crisp and golden brown. Heat grill to hot. Beat eggs, water and seasoning together. Pour mixture into pan, drawing cooked egg mixture from edge of pan towards center, allowing liquid egg to run to pan base. When underside is firm and top is still runny, place pan under hot grill until top is just set. Serve immediately cut in half.3
A striking feature about the Chinese recipe is that much information specifying the quantity required is left out-no accurate measurement of the oil and other seasoning spices, nor the number of eggs. As a result, it seems to be concerned only with the types of ingredients needed. It may read to Anglo-American eyes like an instruction to "do-whatever-you-like" with the listed items. The reader is supposed to know beforehand how much is usually expected of the various ingredients and their sequence of use.
This lack of specification is a common phenomenon in information transfer in the Chinese culture. A professor may say to his or her graduate students, "Here's the task-you have a college degree, so get started on this project". The procedures are incompletely stated (Dodd 1995). The categories and relationships are implicitin cultural experience (Lanigan 1992: 142-154). American students will immediatelyask and clarify what is expectedof them in the project. If the circumstancedoes not allow for questions, they may feel that the professor intends to "check on" their ability for the completion of the project. Otherwise the instructor would have provided more instructions than a mere order. To a Chinese student, the instruction may seem sufficient, at least to start with.
I recall another example of my own: One American professor who, relatinghis experienceat a Chinese university ,said that one of his greatest puzzles was making appointments. The Chinese colleagues would tell him to come for a meeting "in the office building in the (early/late)morning". Often he had to run and ask for specifications,or he would havea hard time working out exactly where and when.
These types of "lack" of specification may suggest, to the Americans under the CP, that the Chinese do not like, or are not used to "clarity" of expression. And, they may wonder how the Chinese people could survive in such a "vague" world. On the other hand, instances like the English recipe may sound unnecessarily detailed, implying the reader, if a Chinese, knows nothing about cooking, which can be taken as an insult. Even if the specifications are listed, no one would be able to observe them accordingly. In a typical Chinese home, people do not have scales, measuring cups, etc. They simply don't feel the need to-generationafter generation has been cooking that way. The cultural maxim is to cook to suit your own taste (= qualitativerelation of categories),not to copy what others have suggested (= categories of quantitative relation).
Another example of the maxim of quantity is a "sense of gratitude". The Chinese differs a great deal from English speaking people with respect to the right amount of expression needed. For the Chinese, the word/expression "thanks" is seldom said. However when necessary, they will repeat the word time and again, possibly withintensifiers like "very much", "from the bottomof my heart", and "endless", etc. So to an English speaker's ears, the Chinese often do not seem to appreciatean act of good intention. Yet, sometimes they seem to overdo it-too many repetitionsto sound sincere to the English speaking people, who tend to use "thanks" response anywhere at any time, but rarely repeat it more than twice on the same occasion.
3.3. A Problem with the Maxim of Relation
Two Chinese friends met on the street around supper time. As a kind of greeting they are likely to say something like:
A: Have you eaten yet?
B: No, not yet. Met a friend just now.
After the greeting each will walk his or her own way. To people of another culture, it may sound irrelevant to the situation: Why should speaker A shows such a concern for B's personal affairs instead of a more general common greetingform? Is A going to invite B todinner? Why does A not do it,but rather ends the dialogue so abruptly? Obviously, Americans feel that the dialogue in fact has just started, and wonder how it has relevance to anything.
The puzzles are natural, if we compare the following which is typical among friends in an English speaking community:
A: Eat yet?
B: No. You?
A: You hungry?
B: A little bit.
A: Wanna a sandwich?
B: Sure, thanks.4
The Chinese tend to be situation(sociocentric group activity;indirect communication) oriented (Samovar 1995: 159). When the Chinese meet on the street, they have no fixed forms of greeting as the English "Hello" or "How are you".5 They will remark on anything they see as proper activity like "Taking a walk"? "Going to work"? "Where are you going"? To English speaking people, these remarks are concerned with matters of personal privacy (ego-centric reference; direct communication),and should be interpreted as if the speaker is really interested in the other's existential condition. Therefore, it could indicate an invitation to a meal (Deng 1989).
This "Have you eaten?" matter is a reflection of the Chinese orientation toward conversation. In general, the Chinese people have strengthened patterns that help to build and maintain proper human group relationships (Yum 1994: 80). For the Chinese and people in-Northeast and East Asia, the most crucial thing in a conversation is to establish an in-group feeling, rather than to exchange information. The just mentioned instances of activity questions are a sign of showing the speaker's concern for the other party, to show that one cares for the other like a member of their own family. And so are all the remarks on similar daily affairs like "Taking a walk?", "Going somewhere?", and "You're early today".
3.4. A Problem with the Maxim of Manner
The fourth of Grice's maxims for cooperative conversation is "manner", which suggests that the speaker should avoid ambiguity and obscurity in expression. This direct communication is a norm in North America despite the extensive use of indirect communication Grice's principle would not be accepted as a norm, however,in East Asia especially in cases where "face work" is involved.Okabe has shown that in Japan, the traditional rule of communication, which prescribes that one does not demand, reject, assert oneself, or criticize the listener straightforwardly,is a much more dominant principle than Grice's maxim of manner (Yum 1994: 83). Likewisein the Chinese culture, people often resort to hints and round-about approaches to criticism, or bury direct criticism in compliments (Xu 1996).
In the Chinese culture the maxim of manner is not working either when people want to show respect for the other party. Once I was visiting a senior professor at a university in.Shanghai. The following excerpt comes from the talk we had:
A: How is Prof. Wang coming along lately?
B: He is doing very well.
A: Does Prof. Wang go swimming often?
B: Yes. As a matter of fact, he goes swimming nearly everyday.
(Silence)
The conversation came to a stop because of the addressing term "Prof. Wang". The use of this vocativeterm in place of a direct "you" is an old and respectful convention. Not conscious of it, I mistook the formal reference to me to mean the head of my university department who also happened to have the family name of Wang,. During the talk, I was-to him-not following the maxim of relevance; to me, he was too vague in expression. For a foreigner, who knows no Wangs, the conversation will be heading nowhere quickly.
Let us look at another example of confusing terms.
A: Pity that her parents can't come over for the wedding.
B: Her third sister-in-law will.
"Her third sister-in-law?" "How many wives does her brother have?", people may ask. The Chinese prefer to call a person by their title denoting social relationship(sociocentric direct communication), rather by name (egocentric reference that is socially indirect), which often leads to misunderstandings in a cross-cultural conversation where direct and indirect conventions get reversed.
4. The Context of Culture
The cases analyzed above show that cultural norms readily affect the participants' (and the on-lookers as well) perception of a conversation. And as I have stressed throughout my analysis, the cultural issue is crucially important for intercultural communication. How then should we conceive of culture as the context of conversation?
Culture functions as a collective programming of thought and behavior (Hofstede 1984). In other words, "culture is the holistic summation and interrelationship of an identifiable group's beliefs, norms, activities,institutions,and communication patterns" (Dodd 1995). Surely the individual acts of behavior through which a culture manifests itself are never exactly alike. Yet,Lado (1957) points out that in every culture certain acts which, in physical terms are different, are nevertheless perceived as the same. For instance, breakfast can be varied in what is actually eaten or drunk, with different table manners at different times. Still the mold or design into which certain acts must fall to be considered "breakfast" in the United States constitute a pattern of behavior, a functioning unit of behavior, in that culture. As a logical consequence, cultures vary due to different beliefs, institutions, and customs of each people, which in turn influences the patterns, the expectation,and perception in a given instance of communication.
Eco also comments on the relationship between codes (including cultural networks) and signs (instances of action). He says that "It is not true that a code organizes signs; it is more correct to say that codes provide the rules which generate signs as concrete occurrences in communication intercourse. Therefore, the classical notion of 'sign' dissolves itself intoa highly complex network of changing relationships" (Eco 1976:49). A culture is like a code whichgenerates signs, as perceived by members of that particular culture,as instances of cooperation. Consequently, different codes produces different signs, or rather the perception of signs, of cooperation.
According to Edward E. Hall (1976), the cultures of the world can be compared on a scale of high to middle to low context A high-context culture refers to the one in which information about procedure is not overtly communicated,but is indirect. Most of the information is either in physical context or is internalized in the person, while very little is in the coded, transmitted, explicitpart of the message. Members are expected to know how to perform, so information and cultural rules remain implicit. The contextis supposed to be the cue for behavior. A low-contextculture is just the opposite. In a low-contextculture,the information is explicitand communicationis direct. It provides information to equip members with procedures and practices in a number of situations. The most frequent intercultural communication difficulty, as Dodd observed (1995), occurs when one person assumes a high-context mind-set, whilethe other person expects explanation, looking for a low-context condition.
In a high context culture, communicationis receivercentered. Emphasis is placed on listening,sensitivity,and removal of personal preconception. It is mainly the Addressee who is expected to be responsible for successful communication,trying to guess, within the cultural allowance,what the meaning of the Addresser's remarks is. As Cheng (1987) suggests, communication in such a culture is perceived to be an infinite interpretive process. One of the common puzzles expressed in Americaby foreign students from East Asia is why they are constantly being asked what they want when they are visitingin American homes. In their own home countries, the host or hostess is supposed to know what is needed and serve accordingly.
As the Chinese culture is considered to be on the high-context side, it explains why the Chinese omelette recipe reads so vaguely and impreciselyfor the English-speakingcommunity,which is seen on the low-context side. The Chinese people have a preconception of how to handle cooking in general,a preconceptionwhich is assumed by the recipe writer.
High-context also accounts for the Chinese example of the "round-up" expression of time. Both the Addresser and Addressee share an agreed idea for the proper time: about nine A.M. for a meeting,after eleven o'clock - if they wanttotakean earlyleave.It depends on how formal the meeting is,the participants involved,the setting, and so on.
Another feature resultingfrom this high-contextmatteris the establishment of proper social relations. For the Chinese, and for most Asians, the most crucial thing in a conversation is to establish an in-group feeling, rather than to exchange information (Yum 1994). They prefer communication involving emotions. This will account for the fact that the Chinese may appear to flout the truth by claiming to know someone whom they have neither heard of nor previously seen. The speaker is trying to establish a kind of intimacy by claiming to have known the other's name for a long time and therefore is a friend, not a stranger.
5. The Culture of Context
As one of the means to establish and maintain social relations, use of indirect communicationis very popular in the Chinese culture. In the case of addressing a new acquaintance, or sometimes even old friends, the Chinese people often prefer using titles like Mr., general manager, sister-in-law,etc. rather than the direct "you" in order to create a conversational context with maxims for discourse promoting the harmony of the group, whether at home or at work. Therefore, clarity in the sense of western culture is usually not the norm among the Chinese communicators. In short, Grice's Cooperative Principle is based on the maxims of Anglo-Americanculture, representingthe particular egocentric norms of direct reference in Occidental culture. The CP does not provide a basis for the Addressee to infer what is conversationallyimplied in indirect communication,especially in an Oriental context. The conditions of intercultural communication thus, providea limitingdiscourse conditionfor Grice's hypostatization of the Cooperative Principle.
