AComparingandContrastingAnalysisofCooperationandPoliteness

杨菁 黄大鹏

Language is the basic tool of communication between human beings and the society.In communication or social interaction，people should follow some principles such as Cooperation and Politeness，in order to achieve the goal of successful communication.

As two of the communicative principles，Cooperation and Politeness have been widely accepted by people，especially language workers and learners.

The cooperative principle is a principle of conversation that was proposed by Grice in 1975 stating that participants expect that each will make a “conversational contribution such as is required，at the stage at which it occurs，by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange” （Grice，1975： 45 cited in Paltridge，2000： 39）.According to his ideas，cooperative principle is a set of norms expected in conversation.He proposes four maxims expected in conversation （Grice，2002： 26-27）： quality，quantity，relation，manner.

In the social interaction or communication，politeness is highly demanded to make successful communication and build up good interpersonal relationships.In 1983，Leech formulates “Politeness Principle”，trying to remedy Grices （1975） “Cooperation Principle”，which is presumed not to be able to interpret peoples indirect saying of things.The Politeness Principle of Leech has six maxims （Leech，1993： 132）： Tact Maxim，Generosity Maxim，Approbation Maxim，Modesty maxim，Agreement maxim，Sympathy maxim.

Social interaction，especially the form of verbal communication，has become a very important part of our life by influencing conversation to shape peoples interpersonal relationships.

Language learners may not know well about the Cooperation Principle and Politeness Principle，especially the maxims，but the principles and their maxims do play very important roles in communication.The four maxims can be seen as instances of one superordinate Cooperation Principle.They have made contributions to the two sides to follow some principles and to be cooperative in communication.And we can use hedge to indicate that we know what we are talking about by applying these maxims （Paltridge，2000）.Also the cooperative principle，along with the conversational maxims，partly accounts for conversational implicatures.Participants assume that a speaker is being cooperative，and thus they make conversational implicatures about what is said.Examples：

（1）Women： Now，Richard，would you care to explain how the answers to the test questions appeared on your desk？

Man： I calls，Professor Harley，Someone must have left them on my desk.

（2）Man： Betty，how was your trip to the museum with Tom this afternoon？ Woman： Dont ask.

From the above examples，we can see that，in example （1），the woman doesnt really want to ask a question about the answers to the test questions.In her question，it conveys the implied meaning that the man is suspected of cheating； in example （2），“Dont ask” is neither that she doesnt know anything about the museum nor that she doesnt want to answer the mans question.It carries the information that something was wrong with the trip.

Like Cooperation Principle，Politeness Principle along with the conversational maxims，also partly accounts for conversational implicatures.In our daily life，we can see many examples as the followings：

（1） A： Would you please help me with this question？

B： Tom is the teacher.

（2） A： Who is going to drive the car on the trip？

B： You are more experienced.

In the above example （1），the answer of B to As question is an implicature that follows the maxim to praise others，which suggests that Tom knows much more about this question.He may give a better answer to As question.While in example （2），it is obvious that the implicature of Bs answer to As question is following the maxim to make the speaker “feel good”.But it is not simply to make A “feel good”，and whats more important is that Bs answer conveys the information that A is the right person to drive the car on the trip.

However，the two principles are by no means perfect； they have relative strengths as well as weakness.They couldnt explain some situations of communication with some “exceptions”.For example，in the Cooperation Principle，the Manner of maxim means “direct and straightforward”.But in the social interactions，we are not always expecting the “direct and straightforward” answers to some questions.

In conclusion，the Cooperation Principle and Politeness Principle do have their strengths and weakness.Particularly，culture consideration should have an important part in applying the principles in intercultural communication，and culture awareness is another important factor to make communication really communicative.

References：

[1]Grice， H.P.（2002）.Logic and Conversation.Beijing： Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.

[2]Leech， N.G.（1993）.Principles of Pragmatics.London： Longman Group Limited.

[3]Paltridge， B.（2000）.Making Sense of Discourse Analysis.Gold Coast： Antipodean Educational Enterprises.