P. Ezra Vasquez's Blog

Last year, I wanted to improve my communication skills, so I attended classes and read books on pragmatics. As a result, Grice’s communicative principles were at the forefront of my mind. It occurred to me that most instances of comedy are related to the Gricean principles. A few months later, I stumbled upon the video below, in which the English comedian Stephen Fry delivered a lecture produced by the language magazine Babel. In the lecture, he describes a scene from Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest that reminded me of my idea about Grice’s maxims.

I’ll preface my explanation by saying that Stephen Fry possesses a unique penchant for words and creative use of language. His craft book on the art of poetry ranks among the best manuals a beginner could lay his hands on.

I’ve added an explanation of Grice’s Cooperative Principle below:

Grice’s maxims of communication, also known as the Cooperative Principle, describe tacit guidelines that govern effective and efficient communication. They were proposed by philosopher H. Paul Grice in his work on pragmatics. The maxims go as follows:

1. Maxim of Quantity: Make your contribution as informative as required, neither more nor less. This means giving enough information to fulfill the communication’s purpose without being overly verbose or providing insufficient information.
2. Maxim of Quality: Be truthful and provide information that is supported by evidence. Avoid making statements that you believe to be false or for which you lack evidence.
3. Maxim of Relevance: Keep your contributions relevant to the ongoing conversation. Strive to provide information that is related to the topic at hand and avoid introducing irrelevant or unrelated information.
4. Maxim of Manner: Communicate in a clear and concise manner. Use language that is clear, avoid ambiguity, and organize your thoughts logically.

These maxims aim to establish effective and cooperative communication by fostering mutual understanding and reducing ambiguity. Speakers unconsciously observe these maxims as they negotiate meaning in conversation.

In the lecture, Stephen describes a scene that illustrates how flouting the Gricean maxims, and in his example a speaker flouts the maxim of quality, a phenomenon also known as “incongruence,” results in comic effect:

The scene Fry reads is humorous because the speaker does not mean, nor even pretend to mean, what he says—hence the maxim of quality is flouted.

I don’t watch much comedy, but I did as a child. Consider the character Lewis from the original Ghostbusters film (1984). Lewis’s character, played by Rick Moranis, is funny because he consistently flouts the maxim of relevance. He rambles about information that his interlocutors do not care about. In that same film when Dan Ackroyd’s character asks Bill Murray, who plays Dr. Venkman, “Where do those stairs go?” and Dr. Venkman says, “They go up,” Murray’s character flouts the maxim of quantity because he provides less information than is required.

Consider other comedic scenes or circumstances from media. What violations of the Gricean principle can you find?