Violation Of The Cooperative Principles Of Conversation

The cooperative principles of conversation act as mechanisms of social control that facilitate efficiency and politeness in everyday social interaction. These principles include: quantity, giving enough information; quality, giving enough evidence; relevance, giving relevant information; and manner, giving clear, concise information. Relevance is the driving force behind the implications and assumptions we create in our social exchanges. An implication is a conclusion one jumps to based on a statement that doesn’t explicitly state what is understood to be relevant. Perceived implications lead to assumptions, which are the beliefs and expectations that are accepted as relevant by a conversational partner without any proof. Violations of cooperative principles are intentionally caused by the speaker and often cause misunderstandings in social interactions. By violating these principles, the speaker is deviating from the social norm of cooperating in conversation. In our …show more content…
We used two similar yet different stimuli questions: “Is anyone sitting here?” and “Is this seat taken?”. Both questions include implications that the speaker wants to sit. One of us would act as the experimenter while the other observed. Taking into account the Hawthorne effect, the observer would stay far enough away as to not manipulate the subject’s reaction. After a subject would reply, the experimenter would not act upon the assumption and walk away.
I was very hesitant to begin the experiment because of the awkward situation I knew it would create. Once I began, the uncomfortable feeling became humorous. This uncomfortable feeling stems from the unconscious underlying conversational structure that a violation disrupts. Because I was consciously aware of this underlying structure, I could see the humor in the situation rather than the