The Communication Book by Mikael Krogerus

Author:Mikael Krogerus
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241982297
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2018-02-25T16:00:00+00:00

How we should express ourselves in order to be understood

People’s three biggest fears: loving someone without being loved in return; searching for friends and not finding any; saying something and not being understood. There is no solution to the first two. For the third there is at least a principle. The British philosopher Paul Grice (1913–88) dedicated his life to this problem and in 1975 finally formulated the so-called Cooperative Principle, a basic rule for effective communication:

‘Make your conversational 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.’

You might be thinking that Grice could have done with some language training himself, but let’s take a closer look at what the Cooperative Principle is actually all about. According to Grice, speaker and listener want to (and have to) behave cooperatively. This means that one person wants to be understood, the other to understand. In order for this to work, Grice proposed four conversational maxims:

1. Maxim of quantity: say enough for your counterpart to understand, but don’t say too much, or you will cause confusion.

2. Maxim of quality: tell the truth, don’t speculate, don’t dupe the person into believing something different.

3. Maxim of relevance: don’t say anything irrelevant, don’t change the subject.

4. Maxim of manner: avoid ambiguity, vagueness, verbosity and volatility, and stick to a logical argument.

If we follow these maxims, then, as a general rule, we will be understood. But what happens if we don’t follow them, which is the case in most of our conversations?

· We can violate the maxims without being noticed. That’s called ‘lying’. (‘Did you wreck the car?’ ‘No, I didn’t’ – although you did.)

· We can violate the maxims deliberately by saying something else but expecting the listener to understand the message correctly. That’s called ‘flouting’. (A typical form is irony: you look out of the window to see the storm intensify. You then turn to your friend and say: ‘What wonderful weather!’)

· We can refrain from cooperation. That’s called ‘opting out’. (If you say: ‘My lips are sealed’, this implies you know something, but won’t talk about it and this will end all communication.)

Only say what is true and important, and express it clearly and simply.

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