Gricean Maxims

Gricean Maxims

Reviewed by Faisal Zaidi

The Gricean maxims are Paul Grice's four rules for cooperative conversation: say as much as is needed and no more, say only what is true, be clear and orderly, and be relevant. Speakers who break one on purpose let the listener infer something that was never said. Miller and Kahn used the idea to explain why an unusual colour name can make a product look better.

What it is

The four rules are usually called quantity, quality, manner and relation. Quantity asks for as much information as the exchange needs and no more. Quality asks for what the speaker believes to be true. Manner asks for clarity and order. Relation asks for relevance. The vault knows them through Daniel Levitin's The Organized Mind (pages 139 and 347), which credits Grice with systematising the rules and with the term implicature.

The point of the framework is what happens when a rule seems to be broken. A listener who assumes the speaker is cooperating looks for the reason, and the inferred reason is the implicature. The vault's example is a recommendation letter that praises only a student's English and attendance: the listener infers that the writer had nothing better to say.

In effect

Miller and Kahn's 2005 paper applies the idea to marketing. Consumers expect marketing messages to be informative. A name such as Friendly green is uninformative about the shade, so a shopper who assumes the seller is being cooperative searches for the reason behind it. The paper argues that the search leaves shoppers with additional positive beliefs about the product and a more favourable response. The details are on the ambiguous colour names page.

The same lens helps with the opposite strategy. A descriptive food name gives the diner more than the plain name did. Whether the Gricean account explains the Stanford dining-hall result has not been tested in the studies reviewed here, and this site does not claim it does.

What it does not say

The maxims are a philosophical account of conversation. They are not an empirical finding, and the vault marks them as not a research claim. Whether they explain a particular marketing result is a separate, testable question. In Miller and Kahn's experiments the account was supported, and the authors report that the sweater results did not rule out an incongruity account, in which a mildly unexpected name is simply liked.

The maxims also do not say that every odd name will be read charitably. A shopper who is distracted, or who does not assume the seller is cooperating, has no reason to search for an implied meaning, and in the jellybean experiment the preference for odd names disappeared under distraction.

Sources

  1. Levitin, D. J. The Organized Mind. Pages 139 and 347, as recorded in the vault's note on the book; this site has not re-read the passages.
  2. Miller, E. G., & Kahn, B. E. (2005). Shades of meaning: The effect of color and flavor names on consumer choice. Journal of Consumer Research, 32(1), 86-92. doi:10.1086/429602. Read at abstract level.