Logic and Conversation

The specification the protocol claims to follow --- be informative, truthful, relevant and clear --- and, in passing, the rule that overrides it.

Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and Conversation. In P. Cole & J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts (pp. 41–58). Academic Press.

Type

Book chapter

Find it

doi.org/10.1163/9789004368811_003

Checked

Against the full text, 15 September 2026

Why it is on the list

Grice’s Cooperative Principle and its maxims of Quantity, Quality, Relation and Manner are the closest thing the protocol has to a published spec. In the same passage, Grice notes that other maxims “such as ‘Be polite’” also generate implicature. Week 3 is built on that aside: the protocol lets politeness overrule the other four, and never says so. The course checked the passage that sets out the maxims (pp. 45–47) against the text.