 You keep sending me weightlifting workouts and pictures of super-muscled people. Just what are you insinuating? I like to think that I'm a fairly well-rounded and educated dude, but linguistics is one of those fractal rabbit holes of intense academic study where, every time I turn a corner, I discover another massive branch of human knowledge that I never even knew existed. It's kind of like being a science fiction geek and discovering the expanse over and over again. On one of my spelunking expeditions down said linguistics caverns, I happen across the work of philosopher Paul Grace. Stereotypically, while linguists tend to celebrate the fantastic diversity and complexity of human expression, philosophers are often more agoraphobic about it, especially analytic philosophers, who frequently get annoyed by how fast and loose most people play with their words. It's like they're not even thinking about absent reference or possible worlds. Could you please just say what you mean? Preferably using logic symbols. Grace's landmark lecture series, Logic and Conversation, delivered at Harvard in 1967, takes a slightly more descriptive approach, detailing a number of interesting observations about how people use natural language. One of the most influential was his examination of conversational implicature, the totally unstated aspects of conversation that nonetheless convey meaning simply by the shape of what's said. At the root of this idea was Grace's theory that, in most cultures, conversation is intrinsically a cooperative exercise, that in order for it to work, all participating parties have to contribute to it in a particular agreed upon fashion. He called this the cooperative principle, which he stated as, make your conversational contribution, such as it is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged. That's a bit of a mouthful. But according to Grace, it's a rule that you know intrinsically and use whenever you're having a conversation, even if you don't think about it. It creates the context necessary for conversational implicatures. In order to make it a little more digestible, Grace unpacked the cooperative principle into four maxims of conversation, sub-rules that each describe an aspect of the principle that are a little easier to recognize on their own, especially when someone breaks them to get a point across. Grace made an important distinction between violating the maxims and flouting them, between straight up ignoring what's expected under the cooperative principle and deliberately subverting it to imply something. Violations aren't very interesting. They just look like social monotitude. But picking and choosing when to break the rules is where the magic of implication happens. First, let's look at the maxim of quantity, that is, convey the right amount of information, not too much, not too little. Check out this terse letter of recommendation written for John Nash by Richard Duffin, noted physicist and professor of mathematics at Carnegie Mellon. Letters of rec are usually around three pages in length, with all sorts of descriptive language about the quality and important characteristics of the applicant in question. However, this one flouts the maxim of quantity. It contains significantly less information than is expected. By doing so, it implies something, that the information contained here is everything the admissions board needs to know. I am Richard Duffin, a respected, brilliant mathematician, and I assert that John Nash is a freaking genius. You can also flout the maxim of quantity in the other direction. If you ask me where I come from and I start off by describing the Big Bang information of galaxies, it's pretty clear from the overabundance of information that I'm supplying, that I'm making a joke. Many of these maxims are flouted for comedic effect, which shows just how deeply rooted they are in our psyche. We find it funny when something subverts our expectations, and breaking the Gracian maxims can be really funny. Next, let's take a look at the maxim of quality. Part of what makes conversation useful is that the information conveyed is true to the best knowledge of the interlocutors. If someone were to lie to you at random every time you spoke to them, you'd probably have very little reason to chat. The information exchange doesn't have to be truthful all the time, but per the cooperative principle, everyone participating is assumed to be doing their best. You're probably well acquainted with the implicator flouting the maxim of quality, sarcasm, and irony. Well, I'm sure glad I watched that whole season. Real quality television. Related to quality is the maxim of relation or relevance. When you're talking with someone, it's presumed that you're going to keep more or less on topic, not flitting off to discuss whatever happens across your mind. The conversation can wander, obviously, but non-sequiturs forcefully violate the cooperative principles directive of contributing by the accepted purpose or direction of conversation, or what we've kind of agreed by group consensus we should talk about. This can be a really fun place to invoke implicature by leaping to some seemingly unrelated subject and letting your conversational partners fill in the blanks on their own. So, how did that web meeting you had yesterday go? Did you know that if you mute your computer microphone, nobody can tell how loud you're screaming to yourself? It can also be used to indicate a broach of protocol, changing the topic suddenly is an implication that the last thing that was said should probably not have been said. Last on Gries's list is the maxim of manner. By manner, he means style, like in the manner of Miles Davis. The presumption here is that conversational participants will speak in a style appropriate to the situation, taking into account the environment, their audience, and so on. We know implicitly to speak quietly and respectfully at funerals, to speak concisely when someone's in a hurry, and not to sprinkle a physics-PhD thesis defense with colorful sexual metaphors. Flouting the maxim of manner by deliberately speaking in a weird style can imply all sorts of things. Say that someone asked me what songs a band performed at a concert that I attended, and I respond they emitted a series of sounds that bore some resemblance to Sweet Child of Mine? Because I clearly had the option of just saying they played Sweet Child of Mine, the meandering nature of my statement is meant to convey something else, namely that they may have technically played it, but not very well. Now, it's important to note that the Griesian maxims aren't meant to be prescriptive. It's not like these are rules that you must follow at all times, or Gries will hunt you down and scold you. They're merely observations of how natural language tends to work, how people seem to communicate with each other. Still, there is something of an imperative here. Many times, people who find themselves in trouble because of something they've said, or neglected to say, will retreat to an exceptionally narrow interpretation of language. I never actually said that x, or you never explicitly asked me about y. There's a reason that legal contracts in descriptions are extraordinarily technical and specific like this, rather than casual or chatty. If you leave a loophole, someone will undoubtedly use it to wiggle their way out of their legal obligations to you, so you cover your basis as clearly as you possibly can. But, as much as some philosophers might like it to be otherwise, the conventional use of language doesn't usually dive into that sort of rigor. As Gries noted, it's much less adversarial and much more of a cooperative endeavor, where all parties are tacitly agreeing to be bound by particular conventions, including the ones that he calls out. I'm all for clarity and expression and thought, but we should also respect the information that we choose to convey via the unstated rules of conversational implicator. Sometimes, what isn't said is just as important. What's your favorite way to flout the cooperative principle of conversation? Please leave a comment below and let me know what you think. Thank you very much for watching. Don't forget to follow and subscribe while I share. And don't stop thunkin'.