
Originally Posted by
chomsky101
1. Suppose you ask a friend what he thought of the new movie in town and he replies, “Well, the costumes were authentic.” Which rule guides you to the inference that
your friend probably didn’t like the movie? Why?
Cooperative principle. Because it allows you to move from point A to point B in conversation, and takes you from the literal meaning to the intended meaning.
The Cooperative Principle is the overall term for Grice's four maxims. I'm not sure whether it applies to this question as such.
You have an adjacency pair.
A: What did you think of the film?
B: Well the costumes were authentic.
Some labels for such adjacency pairs are:
- Request for information and provision of answer
- Invitation and acceptance (or refusal)
- Apology and acceptance (or refusal)
- Statement and disagreement (or agreement)
If I had to make one up, I'd call this: Request for opinion and evasion.
However, I think you are being asked to think in terms of Grice's maxims. In answering A, B does not follow one of the maxims, and that's why we know that B didn't like the movie. Which maxim is B not following?
Advertisements for over-the-counter drugs often make claims like “contains the most effective ingredient” or “contains the ingredient doctors recommend most.” These claims imply that the drugs are effective. What maxim is involved here? Is the inference a logically sound one? Why?
I thought this violated Quality, because there is not sufficent evidence that it is most effective for everyone.
[Gratuitous opinion]
There are many times when more than one maxim is violated. I don't really think much of these maxims because they're really not comprehensive and the names aren't really descriptive of what's happening. [/opinion]
Wouldn't "not sufficient evidence" = Quantity. It's not appropriately informative.
On the other hand it's evasive, so that violates Quality.