Critical Analysis Of Grice's Maxims

Grice's maxims included specific components; quality, quantity, relation and manner however they are always violated within literary work. However, this violation might lead to complex implications which can't' understand by either the readers or the listeners. Nevertheless, the writer intends to achieve some aesthetic effects through his communication process with the readers.

Grice's maxim aims at complete contribution of the listeners to the speaker's speech or the reader to the writers' literary work. Therefore, it mainly concentrates on the quality of communication process between the two participants. Thus, the quality of the speaker's contribution might be positively achieved however it mightn't include any degree of truthfulness at all. Dan Sperber, developed a theory of communication where one principle of Optimal Relevance replaced Grice's maxims as relevance is concerned with the contextual influence of the speaker's or the writer's contribution. In this way, his processing effort

Thus, they can easily recognize if events are true or introduced according to their expectations. Moreover, participants are able to identify if these events came in accordance with previous utterances or contexts. On contrary, when people read a literary text, they ignore all these questions. Thus, widdowson revealed that Grice's four maxims aren't followed in literary texts as readers don't expect to realize them there. Literature doesn't have to be true but it needs to bear a particular conviction. Consequently, it isn't necessary to be relevant but has coherence and consistency so literary texts can be imaginary, irrelevant and unclear however they bear a lot of aesthetic influences. That's why, the literary text might be revealed to the readers' interests but they lead to what Widdowson called the "enclosing effect".(Sharon