cooperative principle

English

Proper noun

the cooperative principle

1. (sociolinguistics) The idea that listeners and speakers need to cooperate in order to communicate effectively.
2. (linguistics, pragmatics) A theory of how listeners and speakers cooperate to communicate with language.
   • 1975, H. Paul Grice, “Logic and conversation”, in Peter Cole, Jerry Morgan, editors, Speech Acts, New York: Academic Press, →ISBN, page 45:

     Our talk exchanges do not normally consist of a succession of disconnected remarks, and would not be rational if they did. They are characteristically, to some degree at least, cooperative efforts [...] One might label this the Cooperative Principle.

See also

• principle of charity (philosophy, rhetoric)