El Principio de Cooperación en la teoría de las implicaturas de Grice

Abstract

The Principle of Conversational Cooperation is a notion that currently refers us to the meaning and communicative theories of the language philosopher H.P. Grice (1967). It is probably one of the most accredited defining elements of communication since it was formulated that extends across disciplines such as Linguistics, Translation Studies, the Theory of Communication. The list, probably, can be extended to all the fields or disciplines of study that have as their own a study object as ductile and adaptable as natural language. However, the term arouses intense debate about the idea of cooperation and its implications for communication. By analysing linguistic and extralinguistic communicative aspects, it can be seen that the issue is complex. Therefore, there are some objections that his proposal has yet to overcome. Some researcher are critical of the universalist application of the Cooperation Principle and conversational maxims argue that participants in a given communicative situation are not always interested in cooperating and furthermore, other principles may work instead such as: the principle of reciprocity (Holly, 1987); the principle of politeness (Lakoff, 1973); the principle of cost-benefit related to the game-theory (Pinker et al. 2008, 2010), and so on. This can be observed in examples related to misunderstandings between couples (Tannen, 1985); legal processes (Goodwin, 2001); bribes, veiled threats (Pinker et al., 2008). Finally, we will defend a theory of strategic communication in which different principles are combined given the complex nature of human activity itself. Every human transaction is conditioned by contextual factors that allow us to carry out and update the meaning of an utterance depending on the emotional and social cost that this entails.