A Critical Appraisal of Grice’s Cooperative Principle

Abstract

Grice’s most influential contribution to linguistics is his theory of implicatures. He describes communication as adhering to what he calls the Cooperative Principle (CP) and argues that a basic underlying assumption we make when we speak to one another is that we are trying to cooperate to construct meaningful conversations (1975). Grice’s Cooperative Principle has been a central and controversial theme in pragmatics. A major source of controversy associated with the CP is that the term “cooperation” is open to different interpretations. In order to develop a thorough understanding of the concept, the CP and conversational implicatures should be studied within the context of Grice’s work. The present article is an attempt to critically examine various representations and interpretations of Grice’s Cooperative Principle.