Maxim of Manner

The maxim of manner is an expectation that people will be clear with what they are saying in a conversation. This is one of the four expectations that make up Grice’s Maxims, otherwise known as the Cooperative Principle.

According to this maxim, the expectation is that people in conversation:

• Are clear with their words.
• Avoid using language that would be difficult for the other people in the conversation to understand.
• Avoid ambiguous language that can be interpreted in multiple ways.
• Don’t say things in an overly wordy way that could confuse people.
• Give information in an order that makes sense and is easy to follow.

The maxim of manner is not about whether you are rude or polite in a conversation. It’s about deciding whether you’ve given information in a way that the people you are talking to can understand – or if it’s unclear.

When we notice that someone hasn’t followed this maxim, it makes us wonder why they aren’t being straightforward with their speech.

This then causes us to interpret hidden, implicit meanings (implicatures) under what they have said.

The maxim of manner is not a rule that you have to follow when you are speaking to other people. It’s just that we need to be aware of the hidden messages we might create when we don’t follow a maxim.

There are many occasions where you might break this maxim on purpose. Sometimes, you do it purposefully to generate an implicature. Other times, you hope that no one will notice that you’ve done it.

Breaking the Maxim of Manner on Purpose

There are plenty of ways that you can break this maxim on purpose. Which one you use will depend on what kind of implicature you want to create – or if you want to generate an implicature at all!

When you are analysing speech, it can be useful to think about which ways people break maxims and why.

Remember: maxims aren’t set rules that dictate whether you are doing conversation “properly” or not. Instead, they are just ways to decide whether we’re going to take your language at face value or if we’re going to interpret a hidden meaning.

In my opinion, out of the four maxims, breaking the maxim of manner on purpose is the most difficult to notice. There are way too many examples out there on the internet that actually mix it up with the maxim of quantity!

This is because both maxims have rules about how much you should say. However, there is a subtle difference.

The maxim of quantity is about the amount of information you give people. On the other hand, the maxim of manner is about the number of words you use to give that information. The maxim of quantity is about what information they provide. The maxim of manner is about how they provide that information.

Flouting the Maxim

Flouting a maxim is when you make it very clear to the other people in the conversation (interlocutors) that you are breaking it. You want them to notice so that they can interpret your hidden implicature.

There are plenty of ways that you might flout the maxim of manner. Let’s look at the following example to help.

Speaker 1: How was Amar's singing?
Speaker 2: There was a somewhat squeaky tone and jumpy cadence to it that wasn't exactly pleasing to my ears.

In this example, Speaker 2 answers in a way that is technically relevant and answers the question. However, they’re using way too many words to say “Amar’s singing was bad” or “I didn’t like it”. They weren’t providing too much information. It’s just that the way they said it was too wordy.

The implicature that is created here can be quite tricky. However, if someone answered a question of yours like that, you might assume that they feel too awkward being straight with an answer like that.

It’s quite like hedging, actually, since it’s an attempt to soften the blow of what they’re saying. In fact, Speaker 2 used the hedging phrase “wasn’t exactly” in there!

Or, on other occasions, it might make a speaker seem pretentious.

There are other ways that you might flout this maxim, though. For example, you might say things in a way that makes it unclear who or what you’re talking about.

Violating the Maxim

When you violate a maxim, you say something that breaks the maxim, but you hope that no one notices. If you are successful when you violate a maxim, you generate no implicature. The intention of a maxim violation is usually to deceive.

In the case of violating the maxim of manner, people often try to get away with being overly wordy or unclear with their words to hide what they’ve said. This will often give them plausible deniability.

Let’s look at an example of this to help.

Lawyer: When you saw the suspect, what was she doing?
Witness: She was holding something long, silver and thin. Just standing there.

In this case, the witness is answering the question asked. It is relevant, and it does provide enough information. However, they were quite wordy with their description of a knife.

Instead of just saying it was a knife, they used language to add ambiguity to what they were saying. Because of that ambiguity, we can’t know for sure if the suspect was holding a knife or not – even if the witness did know! So, we’d say they are violating the maxim of manner.

They most likely did this to avoid snitching on the suspect. It creates some plausible deniability for them, though, because they did technically answer the question truthfully.

Suspending the Maxim

Suspending a maxim is when there is a societal expectation for you to break a maxim. There are plenty of situations where it would be unusual, rude or even detrimental to a person if they were to adhere to the maxims.

When you suspend a maxim, there is no expectation for you to have followed it in the first place. So, you don’t create an implicature. In fact, you might even create an implicature if you do follow the maxim!

There are many social situation where people expect you to suspend the maxim of manner. The most common example of this is euphemism.

Let’s have a look at a few common ones:

• He is no longer with us.
• Did you talk to her about the birds and the bees?
• We’ll have to let you go.

Now, look at the first one. People find it normal, even expected, for you to use euphemisms when you’re talking about death. So, if you just said “he is dead”, it might trigger your interlocutor to have a shocked reaction!

They were expecting you to suspend the maxim of manner to soften the blow of something as serious and upsetting as death. So, when you don’t, it might generate the implicature that you don’t like the dead person!

Breaking the Maxim of Manner by Accident

There will also be cases where you might break a maxim by accident. Usually, this will happen when someone doesn’t realise that they aren’t following the maxims. We call this “infringing a maxim”.

When someone infringes the maxim of manner, it is usually because they aren’t aware of what they’re doing, perhaps because:

• They believe that they have provided the information as clearly as possible.
• The use of drugs of alcohol has caused them to be unclear or ambiguous with their language.
• They misheard what was said or asked of them, meaning their contribution seemed ambiguous.

A really common time when students infringe the maxim of manner is when they are writing an essay. People try so hard to sound smart and include terminology that they accidentally lose the meaning of their words.

Have you ever had Grammarly or spelling and grammar check flag your work for “unclear antecedent”? That’s when it’s not clear what the pronoun you’re using refers to. Let’s look at an example.

Speaker 1: Why are Ezra and Roshan arguing?
Speaker 2: Because he called him stupid.

Here, we don’t know “he” is. So, we’d say that the antecedent isn’t clear. This is a very common way that people infringe the maxim of manner.

When someone infringes a maxim, they aren’t trying to create an implicature. However, just like with violating a maxim, they can’t prevent it if one is generated.