Chapter Five The relation between the CP and the PP "It Is Irrational to bite off more than you can chew whether the object of your pursuit Is hamburgers or the Truth." (Grice, 1987:369) 5.0 Preliminaries The aim of this chapter is to show the relation of the CP and the PP and the explanation of the need for rhetoric In the sense of a set of principles, which are observed in the planning, and interpretation of message. One can think that the study of the relation between the CP and the PP is not new field of research. It is worthwhile to mention that the theoretical clarifications will be dealt by the examples from William Faulkner's selected novels. The main part of this discussion is about the similarities and the contradictions between the PP and the CP. Are there any rules, universal, or local, to manage the discourse and interactions, which would be in accordance with the determined linguistic norms of the PP and the CP? In this chapter, the attempt is being made to manifest some familiar ground by this discussion, although the approach will be to some extent unfamiliar, that how the CP and the PP interact in the interpretation of indirectness. It has been said that rational communication, as captured by Grice's (1975-1989) Cooperative Principle 177 and the related maxims, is against linguistic politeness, which posits that both may not be satisfied simultaneously. It will be also argued that, in accounting for what is communicated, cooperation should not be taken as the point of departure, but may well constitute a derived notion in need of explanation. In this account, the premises of interiocutors' rationality and mutual face-wants yield different degrees of cooperation depending on the cultural and situational context. 5.1 Indirectness, the PP. and the CP Indirectness is the most important kind of politeness in the English-speaking communities. It augments the degree of options and reduces the danger of face threatening. The phenomenon of linguistic indirectness with highlighting the notion of directives in the taxonomy of speech acts is proposed in Searle's work (1979a, b) which states that the chief motivation for indirectness in directives is politeness. Another approach to indirect speech acts' is presented in Levinson's theory (1983), which is built on the work of several researchers, within the framework of conversation analysis. Under this alternative approach, the principal encouragement for indirectness is in the theory of Brown and Levinson (1987). Conclusions regarding politeness are derived from Gricean implicatures, which as it has been already mentioned; I come out from the theory of cooperative principle. This conceptualization about cooperative principle is supplemented with the assumption of the mutual awareness of face'. Searie states: "politeness is a major 178 source of deviation from rational efficiency." (1987: 95) On the other hand, as it has been shown, linguistic indirectness is employed In order to reach the conversational goal of politeness. As far as Grice's four categories, show "being dear" is one of the major concerns of cooperative principles. It explains that there is a contradiction between these two. One cannot use the indirect fonn of speaking as well as being enough clear and achieve to the aim of being relevant and understandable. Study the following example: - Leave the room -1 wonder if you would mind leaving the room. In this example, the first one is a direct request, which seems not to be polite and the second one is indirect request, which is considered not to be so much serious to be mentioned. Clark and Schunk maintain that when speakers make requests, "they make them indirectly through the use of interrogation fomis rather than through the imperative" (1980:11). The following examples can show the interpretation of conversational data where the CP alone appears to break down. These examples demonstrate how an apparent breach of the CP is shown; at a deeper level of interpretation, involving the PP and the CP is released from difficulty by the PP. A: We will all eat hamburger and ice cream, won't we? B: Well, we will all eat ice cream. In this example when A asks B to confirm A's opinion, B confinns part of it and ignore the rest. B wants to manifest that" we will not ai\ eat hamburgef indirectly. 179 By adding" but not hamburger" to this sentence, B could have been more infomnative, but only at the cost of being more impolite to a third party. B supposed the desires infomiation in order to uphold the PP. In the following example from Go Down Moses, the apparent irrelevance in Lucas's reply breaches the maxim of relation: - "... What I can't keep from studying about is what we gonter tell Nat about that back porch and that well." "What we is?" Lucas said. -"What I is, then," George said. Lucas looked at him for a moment. "George Wilkins." He said. "Sir," George said. "I don't give no man advice about his wife." Lucas said. ( P:59) Suppose George thinks that Lucas also shares in his crime, but he is not sure whether he accepts it hence tries not to be very direct and uses only the pronoun of "we" to make him understand they have both the same situation. Then a small step of politeness would be to refuse to put a direct blame, and instead to make a less revealing, substituting an impersonal person for the second person pronoun "you." When Lucas hears this indirect accusation, he responds to it as having concerned that he may be guilty. He denies an offence, which has not been obviously imputed and he, somehow directly, responds that he is not as culprit as George and does not need to find a way to escape from the situation by these 180 utterances: "What we is?" and "I don't give no man advice about his wife." Lucas said. Brown and Levinson (1987) argue that the politeness maxims are more easily undemilned than the cooperative maxims. Leech (1983) says that there is a politeness principle that works in conjunction with the cooperative principle, and identifies six associated politeness maxims, which it has been elaborately discussed in the previous chapter: Tact maxim. Generosity maxim, Approbation maxim, Modesty maxim. Agreement maxim, Sympathy maxim. According to Grice (1989), the cooperative principle and Its associated maxims are universal principles of language use, although some linguists such as Gazder (1979) have challenged this claim and argued that they are subject to cultural variation. In contrast, Leech (1983) maintains that his politeness maxims have different weightings in different societies. As Spencer-Oatey (2000) argues, the politeness maxims all seem to have universal valences. In other words, one pole of given dimension is always taken as being more desirable than the other. For example, with regard to modesty-pride (maxim of Modesty), Leech implies "the more modesty, the better" and with regard to agreement-disagreement (maxim of Agreement), he implies "the more agreement, the better." (Watts, 2002:112-3) Indirectness is a link between the CP and the PP. If the PP is respected by the consideration of before-mentioned maxims and principles, the cooperative principle 181 will be violated and vice versa, if Grice's CP is regarded, the politeness should be violated. Indirectness decreases the level of face threatening and maintaining the politeness by breaking the CP. 5.2 Kim's research Kim (1994) proposed five conversational constraints in relation to requesting behavior. Drawing on theorizing in pragmatics and communication studies, she suggested the following concerns: to concem to avoid hurting i\r\e hearer's feelings, to concem of avoiding imposition. Hence, it is very important'not to intrude on the other person, to concem to avoid negative face of evaluation by the hearer. Then it is very important that the message does not cause the hearer to dislike speaker, to concem for clarity, to concern for effectiveness and get the other person to do what the speaker wants. Kim investigates the importance to people, when making a request, these five concerns and compares them in some English-speaking societies. Unlike Kim's studies (1994), which asked each participant to respond one of these scenarios, the recent studies show that for being polite, it seems to be necessary to respect all of the above-mentioned theories. Spencer-Oatey (2000-2002) claim that sociality rights are an important motivating parameters underiying the management of relations, and it suggests that in future research, the notion of rights needs to be considered much more carefully and systematically. People's use of language is influenced not only by immediate 182 contextual factors, but also by underiying soclocultural prindples or concerns. The linguists Imply that there are some orders that reflect people's stylistic concerns: their concerns about directness-indirectness, modesty-approbation, wamnth/involvement-coolness/restraint, etc. 5.3 General Social Function of the CP and the PP It seems necessary to consider the general social function of these two principles and the relation between them. The CP enables one participant in a conversation to communicate on the assumption that the other particfpant is being cooperative and it can regulate what is said. It could be expressed that the PP has a higher regulative role than this: to show the friendly relations which gives this assumption that the interlocutors are being cooperative in the first place. The relation and the priority of one of these maxims to the other one are not concerned as a fix and unchangeable order. There are some situations that politeness can take a back seat and where the PP can overrule the CP in the sense that even the maxim of Quality is sacrificed.