2.3 The cooperative principle
The term the co-operative principle was coined by H.P Grice, who was a philosopher of
language at Oxford University. In his works in the 1940's and 1950's he suggested that in
conversation, interlocutors unconsciously adhere to four conversational maxims, which are
subsumed under the co-operative principle (Thomas 1995:56). Grice described the
cooperative principle in these words:
Make your contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the
accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged. (cited in
Thomas 1995:61- 62)
What the cooperative principle says is that people who are involved in a conversation are
working on the assumption that certain rules control their operation, i.e., a set of culturally
bound rules that vary in different cultures but are followed by all the participants of a
conversation in order for a conversation to be successful. The main underlying assumption of
the cooperative principle is that people cooperate when they are conversing (Thomas
1995:62).