On trying and lying: Cultural configurations of Grice's Maxim of Quality

Abstract

Gricean communication takes place when an audience recognizes an utterer’s intention to communicate some specific content by producing a particular locution. This general view is discernible in Grice’s wording of the maxim of Quality, which pivots on the idea of utterer ‘‘trying’’ to avoid falsehood. The cultural model of utterance interpretation among the Mopan Maya of Eastern Central America however, does not refer to the intentions of the utterer. For example, falsehoods are categorized by Mopan as blameworthy violations of Quality (‘‘lying’’) whether or not the utterer was aware of the falsehood at the moment of utterance. Ethnographic evidence suggests that even mutually known falsehoods are not interpreted figuratively among traditional Mopan, who do not produce or recognize fiction. But since Mopan conversation otherwise proceeds in general very much as it does in other languages, the Mopan findings suggest that intention-seeking must not in fact be necessary to most ordinary conversational interaction. This conclusion supports post-Gricean views in which routine conscious interrogation of interlocutors’ intentions are not necessarily required for the conduct of ordinary conversation in any society. Overall, the data suggest that Grice was perhaps right that the figurative interpretation of novel flouts requires intention-seeking on the part of audiences. It also suggests, however, that intention-seeking in conversation may be reserved for cases in which a maxim violation is suspected, and may be confined to those cases in which the status of utterer’s intentions is culturally understood to be relevant to the question of whether a violation has indeed taken place. Intercultural Pragmatics 7-2 (2010), 199–219 DOI 10.1515/IPRG.2010.01