Principleas of effective communication

1. Principles of effective communication:
P
. Grice,
G. Leech, P
. Brown and S. Levinson
PERFORMED BY
SECOND-YEAR STUDENT (SUBGROUP 2)
INSTITUTE OF FOREIGN PHILILOGY
SOFIIA POGRANYCHNA
LUTSK 2020

2. Plan
 Introduction
 Maxims of Conversation: The Principles of Effective
Communication
 G. Leech and his theory
 Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson's
Politeness Theory
 Conclusion
 Literature

3. Introduction
 The Oxford English Dictionary defines communication as "the
imparting, conveying, or exchange of ideas, knowledge and
information'.
 The word effective means that you exactly will have the result
after your discussion. In this case, we can be sure that our
speech is really something important for others.
 If we add the word principles, the statement will change and
now effective communication won’t be the improvisation. It
will be the set of some rules about the ways how to speak
effectively.

4.  There are many scientists who have a lot of researches. The most famous
theories are the following:
The Five W’s
Lasswell's (1948)
The Message
William McGuire (1981)
Monroe's
Motivated Sequence (1935)
Grice’s maxims of
conversation (1989)
Leech's Politeness Principle
and Maxims of Interaction (1983)
Who explores principles of effective
communication?

5. Maxims of Conversation:
The Principles of Effective
Communication Grice’s maxims of conversation are a collection
of maxims proposed by linguist Paul Grice to
describe principles that people intuitively follow
in order to guide their conversations, in order to
make their communicative efforts effective.
There are four main maxims, which revolve
around the quantity, quality, and relevance of
what people say, as well as on the manner in
which they say it.

6. Maxims of Quantity (be informative)
There are two maxims of quantity:
Make your contribution as informative as is required. Provide all the information which
is necessary for the purpose of the current exchange; don’t leave out anything important.
• “Keep walking straight until you reach the intersection, and then turn right.”
Do not make your contribution more informative than is required. Leave out any
unnecessary details that aren’t important to the current exchange.
• “Keep walking straight ahead; there will be some nice flowers on your right and some lovely new trees that they
just planted a few months ago on your left.”

7. Maxims of Quality (be truthful)
There is one supermaxim of quality:
 Try to make your contribution one that is true.
Furthermore, based on this supermaxim, there are two more-specific
maxims of quality (sometimes referred to as submaxims):
 Do not say what you believe to be false. Avoid stating information that
you believe might be wrong, unless there is some compelling reason to
do so. If you do choose to include it, then provide a disclaimer that
points your doubts regarding this information.
 Do not say that for which you lack evidence. Avoid including
information that you can’t back up with supporting evidence. If you do
choose to include such information for some reason, provide a
disclaimer that points out your doubts.

8. Maxims of Manner (be clear)
There is one supermaxim of manner:
 Be perspicuous [clear].
There are various additional maxims of
manner (sometimes referred to as
submaxims), that are based on this
supermaxim. Grice lists four specific ones in his
original work.
Be orderly
Avoid
obscurity
of
expression
Avoid language which is difficult to
understand, such as because it
contains words that the listener
doesn’t know.
Avoid
ambiguity
Avoid ambiguous language which
can be interpreted in multiple ways,
and which therefore makes it difficult
for your recipient to understand
what exactly you’re trying to say.
Be brief
Provide information in a concise
manner, that allows your recipient to
focus on the key details.
Be orderly
Provide information in an
order that makes sense, and
makes it easy for your
recipient to process it.

9. Maxim of Relation (be relevant)
There is one maxim of relation:
 Be relevant. Make sure that all the
information you provide is relevant
to the current exchange; omit
irrelevant information.

10. G. Leech and his theory
 The theory of politeness which is now considered to be the most complete,
most established, and relatively most comprehensive has been formulated
by Leech (1983).
 Therefore, the basic concept adopted in this study is the theory of politeness
principle developed by Leech.
 Leech divided politeness principle into six maxims, namely:
-tact maxim;
-generosity maxim;
-approbation maxim;
-modesty maxim;
-agreement maxim;
-sympathy maxim.

11. Tact maxim
 The basic idea in tact maxim it is that the participants of
the speech should always adhere to the principle of
reducing their own profit and maximizing the other's profit
in the communication.
 A person who holds and practices tact maxim will be
regarded as a polite person. Similarly, the instruction which
is expressed indirectly is more polite than the one is spoken
directly. Therefore, the more indirect a speech, the more
polite it is.

12. Generosity maxim
 The purpose of generosity maxim is make your profit as little as possible; make your loss as big as possible.
For example, in speech “You may use my umbrella,” there is a
disadvantage for the speaker and the benefit for the interlocutor.
A higher level of politeness can be achieved if the listener is not
mentioned as the giver, for example: “Can I have some sugar?”
and even more polite if the speaker does not appear as a
recipient, as in utterance “Is there some sugar?” .

13. Approbation maxim
 Approbation maxim is
an attempt to avoid
saying unpleasant
things about others,
more specifically, about
the listener.
For example, after a music show,
a spectator would be considered
polite if he/ she praised the
artist’s performance by saying,
“He played very well,” instead of
saying, “That was a vapid musical
performance.”

14. Modesty maxim
 In modesty maxim, the speech
participants are expected to be
humble by reducing the praise
of them.
 For example, it can be seen in
the following conversation:
Your answer
is very
excellent!
Ah, I think it
is ordinary.
Oh, yes, it's
me.

15. Agreement maxim
 In agreement maxim, it is emphasized that
all speech participants speak to one another
mutually appropriate or the compatibility is
created among them in the communication.
 The implementation of agreement maxim
can be seen in the following conversation :
Teacger1: This room is dark, isn’t it?
Teacher2: Where is the light switch?

16. Sympathy maxim
 In sympathy maxim, it is expected that all speech participants can maximize the attitude of sympathy
with one another. Attitudes of antipathy towards others will be regarded as an act of impoliteness.
Speech act such as congratulation includes the
application of sympathy maxim. In the
sympathy maxim, it is expected that if others
get success or happiness, the speaker should
give congratulation, as the following example:

17. Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson's
Politeness Theory
 Politeness is described as a social norm, or a set of
prescriptive social 'rules'. Many linguists have aimed to
research politeness, including Brown and Levinson (1987),
who developed their 'face theory' based on the principles
of our desire to be liked and to not be imposed upon.

18. The concept of “face”
 Face is defined as the public self-image every adult portrays,
which must be attended to in interaction.
There are two aspects of this face: positive and negative.
 Positive face is the desire to be appreciated and liked.
 Negative face is the desire to have freedom and not to be
imposed upon.
 A Face Threatening Act (FTA) is an act which deliberately
threatens the face needs of others.[1]

19. Differences between attitudes
 Politeness is defined as using
communicative strategies to create and
maintain social harmony.
This can be done in various ways:
 being contextually appropriate
 following social and cultural norms
 being socially positive by addressing face
needs
 Impoliteness is defined as engaging in
aggressive facework in particular contexts
to cause social disruption.
This can be done in various ways:
 the speaker intentionally attacks face
 the listener perceives a face attack
 both of the above

20. Superstrategies with FTAs:
Bald on record is not attempting to minimise the face threat.
Positive politeness is showing you value someone so
minimising the threat to the positive face.
Negative politeness is not impeding on someone so
minimising the threat to the negative face.
Off record is avoiding responsibility for the FTA often by
being indirect.
Withhold is not performing
Bald on record is an unmitigated intentional face attack.
Positive impoliteness is attacking the positive face need
by not showing you value someone.
Negative impoliteness is attacking the negative face need
by imposing on someone.
Off record is using indirect offence such as sarcasm or
banter.
Withhold is failing to be polite when it is expected.

21. Summary of the theory
 Politeness superstrategies are determined by
contextual factors:
 Power relations between speaker and listener
 Social distance between speaker and listener
 How great the threat of the face threatening
act is
 Our aim in conversation is generally
cooperative, so the more 'dangerous' we
percieve our FTA to be, the higher number
strategy we use.

22. Conclusion
 In a way, the principles of effective
conversation might seem almost
trivial, since they’re all fairly intuitive,
and follow what common sense tells
us our communication should be
like.
For example, it seems obvious that,
if we want to communicate
effectively, we should make sure
that what we say is relevant to the
discussion at hand.
 However, in reality, people often violate
many of these rules without realizing
that they’re doing so, which hinders their
communication efforts.
Therefore, in order to ensure that your
communication is as effective and free of
issues as possible, you can actively use
these postulates as guiding principles,
and actively remind yourself to abide by
them when you’re trying to convey
information to others.

23. Literature
 Grice, H.P
.. “Logic and Conversation.” Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.
 Brown, Penelope and Stephen C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some universals in
language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [First published 1978
as part of Esther N. Goody (ed.): Questions and Politeness. Cambridge
University Press]
 G. N. Leech - Principles of Pragmatics, London: Longman,1983.