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.
Used on page 511