As part of his pragmatic theory of language, Paul Grice proposed four maxims that were implicitly adopted during most day-to-day human cooperative interactions:
quantity – try to give as much information as is necessary, but no more;
quality – try to offer truthful and reliable information;
relation – try to offer relevant and pertinent information;
manner – try to be as clear and broef as possible whilst avoiding ambiguity.
The overacrching pronciple is that people try to offer infornation that helps to further the conversation.
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