Maxim of Quality[edit]
Do not say what you believe to be false.
Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
Maxim of Quantity[edit]
Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange).
Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.
Maxim of Relation[edit]
Be relevant.
With respect to this maxim, Grice writes, “Though the maxim itself is terse, its formulation conceals a number of problems that exercise me a good deal: questions about what different kinds and focuses of relevance there may be, how these shift in the course of a talk exchange, how to allow for the fact that subjects of conversations are legitimately changed, and so on. I find the treatment of such questions exceedingly difficult, and I hope to revert to them in later work.”[1]
Maxim of Manner[edit]
Avoid obscurity of expression.
Avoid ambiguity.
Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity).
Be orderly.
Relying on the other’s inference is critical in a lot of communication, along many dimensions, and people manage to do it all the time by following these rules (most are learned through typical social interaction, but execution can always be improved).
If you want to be super-direct, go for it, but if you earnestly keep in mind the other person’s state of mind, and the above maxims, you’ll usually have no problem navigating guess culture (unless you’re making a transition between countries or something similar).
Fun fact: Linguists talk about this in the context of the Gricean maxims, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative_principle
Maxim of Quality[edit] Do not say what you believe to be false. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
Maxim of Quantity[edit] Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange). Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.
Maxim of Relation[edit] Be relevant. With respect to this maxim, Grice writes, “Though the maxim itself is terse, its formulation conceals a number of problems that exercise me a good deal: questions about what different kinds and focuses of relevance there may be, how these shift in the course of a talk exchange, how to allow for the fact that subjects of conversations are legitimately changed, and so on. I find the treatment of such questions exceedingly difficult, and I hope to revert to them in later work.”[1]
Maxim of Manner[edit] Avoid obscurity of expression. Avoid ambiguity. Be brief (avoid unnecessary prolixity). Be orderly.
Relying on the other’s inference is critical in a lot of communication, along many dimensions, and people manage to do it all the time by following these rules (most are learned through typical social interaction, but execution can always be improved).
If you want to be super-direct, go for it, but if you earnestly keep in mind the other person’s state of mind, and the above maxims, you’ll usually have no problem navigating guess culture (unless you’re making a transition between countries or something similar).