Maxim of Quantity

The maxim of quantity is the expectation that people will say just enough and give the right amount of information in a conversation. It 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:

• Give enough information to be informative in the conversation.
• Don’t provide too little information that would make your contribution to the conversation uninformative.
• Don’t give more information than you need to for your contribution to be informative.

The maxim of quantity is not about whether or not you dominate in a conversation. It’s not about counting the number of words you use. It’s about deciding whether you have provided enough information – or if it is too much or too little.

When someone is not following this maxim, it makes us wonder why they are not being straightforward in their speech. We question why they have provided unnecessary extra information, or why they have chosen to leave out important information.

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

The maxim of quantity 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 Quantity 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.

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 quantity. Let’s look at the following example to help.

Speaker 1: How was your Monday?
Speaker 2: It was a Monday.

The speaker answers in a way that is technically relevant to the discussion and does answer the question. However, it doesn’t provide the level of information that we’d expect for a question like “How was your Monday”. It gives us way more info than we’d expect. So, we’d say it flouts the maxim of quantity.

The implicature that is created here is that Speaker 2’s Monday was bad and that all Mondays are bad. So, it’s expected that they didn’t have a good day.

It can be trickier to spot when someone is flouting this maxim by giving too much information. However, it might present itself in different ways:

• Telling people things they already know.
• Over-explaining the information, not being efficient enough.

Let’s look at another example for this.

Speaker 1: How was the football match?
Speaker 2: I watched a bunch of people in weird socks run around and try to kick a ball.

In this case, Speaker 2 is giving way more information than is needed. It generates the implicature that the football match was bad.

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.

In the case of violating the maxim of quantity, people often try to get away with omitting important details. They try their best to say as little as possible while still looking like they are provided the information their interlocutors expect of them.

This is often the case when someone doesn’t want to incriminate themselves or admit to doing something they shouldn’t have done.

For example, let’s imagine that your parents told you that you couldn’t go to a party over the weekend. You had to stay at the house and look after your little brother. So, you chose to have your party at your house instead, knowing that they didn’t want you to party at all.

An exchange where you violate the maxim of quantity might look like this:

Parent: What were you doing over the weekend?
You: I was at home, like you told me to be.

In this case, you’re not being untruthful. You were at home. However, you are leaving out important information that you would be expected to include. This would violate the maxim of quantity.

Of course, although you intended not to create an implicature, once you say something, it is out of your control how other people interpret it. So, they might figure out that you have violated this maxim and accuse you of lying by omission. When this happens, they will ask themselves why you chose to leave out important details, generating an implicature.

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 plenty of social situations where there is an expectation for you to suspend the maxim of quantity.

In the past, one of the most common times when someone would suspend this maxim is in a telegram or other short-form communication. Nowadays, this is true with emails, texts, and quick ways to communicate with other people.

Breaking the Maxim of Quantity 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 quantity, it is usually because they aren’t aware of what they are doing, perhaps because:

• They believe that they have provided enough information for the conversation (e.g. if they think that their interlocutors have information that they actually don’t).
• The use of drugs or alcohol has caused them to muddle up parts of the conversation, making them think that they provided enough information when they didn’t.
• They misheard what was said or asked of them, meaning their contribution to the conversation wasn’t informative enough.

For me, one of the biggest reasons why I infringe the maxim is because I have a stream of consciousness running in my head at all times. I might have big chunks of a conversation with myself in my head. Then, I’ll turn to my interlocutor and continue the conversation I had with myself! This leaves them confused and without enough information.

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.