To describe interpersonal communication, the so-called Cooperation Principle was developed in the 20th century by Paul Grice. This principle forms the foundation of a communication theory. It states that communication partners basically assume that their counterpart acts cooperatively and makes an effort to make meaningful contributions to the conversation. Thus, this principle does not want to dictate how we should communicate, but rather it tries to describe how we actually communicate in everyday life. For example, in a conversation we assume that our counterpart is saying something about the current topic of the conversation and is not lying to us. 

The cooperation principle is divided into four conversational maxims. A maxim is a generally applicable rule. Typically, we adhere to these four guidelines in a conversation and assume that our counterpart also adheres to them. However, we will see in Unit 2 that there are exceptions to this. Unit 1 first deals with the four conversational maxims: quantity, quality, relevance and manner. The maxim of quality refers to the form of what is said, while the other three maxims refer to the content.

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Maxim of quantity

As the name implies, this maxim refers to the amount of information given in a conversation.

• A statement should be as informative as required by the current purpose of the conversation.

• A statement should not contain more information than necessary.

This means that you should say enough to be well understood, but also no more than necessary. This means there should be only a few ways to understand the statement when just the right amount of information is given.

An example of this is "Luisa has three children". This can only be understood to mean that Luisa has exactly three children, no more than three and no less. The person listening comes to this conclusion quite automatically without an active thought process.

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Maxim of quality

Regarding quality, there is an umbrella maxim: make a true contribution to the conversation. This involves two aspects:

• A statement should not contain information that one believes to be false.

• A statement should not contain anything for which one cannot find reasonable grounds for its truthfulness.

An example of this is "Luisa is home". The person speaking expresses this to the best of their knowledge and strongly believes that Luisa really is at home. This may be based on the fact that the speaker lives across the street from Luisa and therefore sees her car in the parking lot. In addition, they could have prior knowledge like Luisa always has breakfast with her children at this time of day. A sentence as "Luisa is at home, but I don't think so." would be rather illogical and paradoxical.

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Maxim of Relevance

This one is about adding contributions to a conversation that are appropriate in terms of content. Accordingly, the maxim goes as followed:

• Be relevant.

An example of this is:

        A: "I'm out of gas."

        B: "There's a gas station around the corner."

At first glance, it seems as if person B is talking about something completely different, because the gas is not specifically mentioned. However, it is assumed that B is making a relevant contribution to the current conversation, so we have to interpret the statement as meaning that there is gas in stock at the gas station just mentioned, so that A can fill up the tank.

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Maxim of manner

The maxim of modality requires us to express ourselves clearly, or more precisely, unambiguously. Ambiguous means there are multiple possible meanings and it isn’t clear which one is meant.  For this to be the case, four points must be observed: 

- Be clear:

• Avoid unclear expressions.

• Avoid ambiguity.

• Be brief.

• Stick to the right order.
   

There is a difference between unclear expressions and ambiguity. An unclear expression is something that is confusing, either through contradicting information or poor language use. Ambiguity on the other hand is understood as something that can have more than one meaning and the listener gets confused about what exactly they are talking about.

But especially the fourth point needs further explanation. We do not doubt the truth of what is said, no matter in what order the events are presented. However, the meaning of the sentence may become quite different once some events are placed before or after others. To explain this, let's look at an example:

Alexander heard a bang, went outside and saw the car accident.

Here, it is clear that Alexander first perceived the bang, then left the house and saw the car accident, which took place near his house.

However, if the sentence reads as follows, the events are not in the same order as before:

Alexander went outside, saw the car accident, and there was a bang

Here, Alexander first left the house, for example to get the mail, then he saw the car accident happen and afterwards, quite independently, he heard another bang. This is a completely different picture from the one in the first sentence. We see that it is important to keep to the order in which the events happened. Otherwise the sentence may not make sense anymore, on its own or even put into context.

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Another example of the maxim of modality: A and B are sitting in A’s closet and talking about movies.

A: "I don’t want to give too much away.”

B: "Don’t worry. You have enough clothes."

A is confused by B’s answer. A meant that they didn’t want to figuratively give too much information to B about a movie, so that B would still enjoy the movie. But B understood ‘give away’ as donating clothes. So the two have interpreted the same phrase with different meaning, and so a misunderstanding has arisen.