Cooperative principle

The cooperation principle was described by Paul Grice, it refers in the context of linguistics on how people use language and interact with each other in linguistic communication. Grice formulated in the context of his theory of conversational implicature, the principle of cooperation as follows:

The principle is descriptive rather than prescriptive to understand, that is, it is meant as a description of the normal behavior of communication participants, rather than a prescribed, linguistic law. Grice believed that it is the use of language is based. Following the principle of cooperation, makes a spokesman for an utterance to be on the purpose and goal of the conversation conducive to the purposes and goals may be different for different conversations. The receiver in turn is naturally assume that the utterance follows the principle of cooperation, that is, he takes the cooperativity of the speaker in the process of understanding this statement as a prerequisite. Only as a last resort he moves from it and interpret an utterance as uncooperative or as a signal of the call termination.

Put simply, can the cooperation principle expressed by saying that the speaker makes his statement so that the particular handset is in each conversation context it already understand what the speaker means by that. On the other side of this handset builds his interpretation on it that the speaker will have said something meaningful, and studied for example in understanding problems for the most likely meaning.

The cooperation principle can explain, for example, that a conversation can be useful obviously, even though approximately between question and answer, there is no direct semantic or general language context, which is able to explain the intended meaning, as in:

The cooperation principle was further elaborated by Grice and subdivided according to his theory in four conversational maxims that describe the rational or logical laws that are respected by speaker and listener to communicate with maximum effect and to transport each intended meaning of a spoken utterance with each other. Effective is the cooperation principle in searching and revealing the importance of conversational implicature, in which between two modes of action, it is discriminated. One hand, by following the principles or the co-operation principle, on the other hand, by their apparent fracture

The cooperation principle was taken up and retained in the following linguistic research as a postulate. The maxims were thereby partially summarized, some have been added more maxims.

Examples see implicature and conversational maxims.